


Harry Potter and the Secret of the Stars

by otblock57



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Smart Harry Potter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-15 00:53:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 33,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29055441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/otblock57/pseuds/otblock57
Summary: Harry Potter had always been fascinated with the stars. He could look up into the night sky and forget his dreary life at Privet Drive, if only for a few moments, and he wanted to travel among the stars more than anything. Being told he was a wizard didn't change that- all it meant was that he had more tools to explore the secrets of the stars!
Comments: 2
Kudos: 26





	1. Beginnings

**Author's Note:**

> Note: this is going to be a modern AU, with 2020-ish technology (although no COVID). In part because I don't feel like all that research, and also because I think modern tech and magic is fun. I really hope someone else hasn't done this whole space thing already.
> 
> Also, the Harry I've created is pretty different from canon- he takes after me in a lot of ways, honestly. My passion for space in particular. I'm reflecting this in a different wand wood, among other things. The same core, of course, but a different wood to reflect different goals.

Harry Potter had always been fascinated by the stars. For years and years, looking up at the sky was a way to forget about Privet Drive for a while, and it was so easy to just look up and leave the world behind. The stars were so far above everything, and the Dursleys couldn't just take them away. Sure, they could lock him away in the closet under the stairs, but eventually, after a few particularly long punishments the roof itself seemed to fade away to show the stars- all around the clock. It could block the rain and snow, but it always showed the stars. Climbing up the stairwell, the stairs were still opaque and should have blocked the sky if the roof didn't. Strange.

Eventually, Harry started going to school, and about stars, how they were great burning balls of gas in space, and how they were girdled by planets, planets just like Earth! Wouldn't it be amazing to just leave Earth behind, abandon the Dursleys, Dudley's friends, the students who ignored him and just fly away? Live on some distant world, where the lights of the cities didn't block the stars, where he could do what he pleased and eat his fill every day before falling asleep under the sky…

Learning that the other planets were too dangerous to live on, thick with deadly clouds or completely lacking in any air to breath, and were too far away to reach without months of travel through the depths of space… that was a disappointment, but it didn't dampen his enthusiasm. The Americans had sent men to the moon, Armstrong and Collins, and probes had been sent to many other planets.

Harry learned quickly that the best way to avoid more beatings than usual was to play down his knowledge, score lower than Dudley. Of course, he wasn't going to leave something like that up to chance- he made sure he knew the answers, so he could just enough wrong. He supposed that he could just completely flunk himself and guess randomly (which wasn't too much better than Dudley's academic endeavors in all honesty) but Harry's dignity meant he felt obligated to try, and the Dursleys never noticed that he was always, consistently, a few points below Dudley's average. At the very least, Dudley-kins was predictably lackluster.

Before Harry realized that playing down his talents was in his best interests, teachers were encouraging him, and afterwards it was complaining about his wasted talent. At least the librarian tolerated him, although Harry wasn't stupid enough to check out any of the books to bring home. Even then, Harry stayed as late in the library as he dared, consuming every book he could get his hands on, and the librarian was happy to accommodate him.

He read and read and read. Books of course, retelling the trials and tribulations of the old missions- Mercury, Gemini, and of course all of Apollo- from the deadly conflagration in Apollo 1 to cooperation with the Soviets during Apollo-Soyuz, but he also read newspapers about more modern missions.

Of course, realizing that one of the greatest triumphs of human spaceflight was half a century in the past was depressing, along with the simple fact that nothing had happened since then. The logical next step was Mars, but other than some rovers… nothing. It was frustrating, knowing that nothing was done, in the same way Harry couldn't change the circumstances of his life with the Dursleys. Of course, he hoped to change both of these things in the future. He was sure that if he could just get out of Privet Drive, he could really show the world what was he was capable of… and of course, he did eventually get out of Privet Drive around the time of his eleventh birthday, although he certainly wasn't expecting it.

* * *

A week before his birthday, things seemed fairly normal, and Harry was a little excited- he was considering treating himself by staying as late as he could in the library. Of course, he knew better than to expect any gifts from the Dursleys, and the summer holidays meant he had to take the long walk to the public library as opposed to the school's. Of course, he didn't have a card for the public one, but it was a much better way to spend the day than fleeing from Dudley and his pals- they seemed allergic to the place.

The library at Smeltings may have been pretty good- it was a fancy private school, after all- and Harry was disappointed that Dudley would inevitably waste it. If they had a library at all, that is. Maybe they spent the budget on Smeltings sticks instead.

Of course, Harry didn't expect much from the world as of yet. All he had ever received was Dudley's scraps, and that was enough; however, the letter addressed to one Mr. H Potter in the Cupboard under the Stairs still filled him with excitement. Something, anything for him- and what a letter it was, in a thick, old fashioned envelope with an intricate wax seal on its back.

Harry was almost tempted to hide it away- maybe shove it under his hand-me-downs, which definitely baggy enough to hide it- when Dudley spoke up. "Dad! Dad, Harry's got something!" Vernon reacted with remarkable speed for his bulk, snatching the letter from Harry's hands, and alarm bells started ringing in Harry's head as Vernon's expression grew very concerning.

Eventually, Harry and Dudley were booted out of the kitchen as Vernon and Petunia spoke in hushed tones, about people watching them, and stamping something out. Of course, this started Harry wondering- what were they stamping out, and who would be watching them?

These answers came a lot sooner than he expected.

* * *

Harry's move to the second bedroom was alright, he supposed, although he definitely missed the starlight that came through the strange, starry panorama that had appeared on the closet's roof. There was something up with that, something supernatural, but the Dursleys never took notice- they tried their best to ignore him and his closet. Thank goodness for that- the Dursleys hated anything that even hinted of the supernatural or magic. The window really wasn't the same, but it wouldn't provoke a beating if Harry was discovered staring through it, so that was something.

The room was full of stuff that Dudley had discarded, broken toys, technology, and gadgets that had piqued Dudley's interest until he inevitably managed to break them. Perhaps break was a strong word, considering that Dudley tended to drop them the moment they started giving him any issues, or once the newer version came out the next year. With a bit of finagling, Harry could get one of the old computers working maybe, or repair one of the old devices?

Those were projects for the future, though- Harry was more interested in the books, which remained untouched. Dudley had gone through many phases and different interests, and as such the books covered a variety of subjects, even if only a few were nonfiction. Of those books, even fewer were useful to Harry, considering what he already knew, considering that they were written for young(er) children.

He supposed he could have stayed up late torturing himself about what was inside that letter, but he figured that if it was important enough to send such a fancy envelope, it was important enough for the mysterious sender to follow up if he didn't respond. So he decided to read some of Dudley's books- it was a better way to spend the night than worrying.

* * *

The next two days yielded letters, although Harry didn't get a chance to read them thanks to Vernon, so he kept on reading. No use in wasting time pondering or brooding, after all.

Afterwards, the next few days saw the letters arriving in mass, dozens of them jammed into any openin the house had left. At first things were fairly rational, jammed into the gap between the front door and its frame, but the third day saw a fusillade of letters pouring down the chimney, which finally caused Vernon to snap.

Harry figured that if the letters came down the chimney they would probably follow him anywhere, but he didn't bring that up to Vernon before packing to go.

And the letters proved him right when they arrived in droves at little hotel Vernon had driven to in a desperate attempt to escape. After that, he tried to flee further, even going out to sea in an attempt to get away from the storm of stationery. Maybe he was hoping the miserable weather would scare off whoever or whatever was bringing the mail to them- and Harry did have to admit that in better circumstances, a birthday trip to an isolated island would be fun.

Of course, a fun island would be near the equator, warm and sunny, instead of being little more than damp rock that peaked out from the churning gray sea. Vacationers probably wouldn't enjoy the intense stench of seaweed that leaked through the gaps in the hut's aging wood. Their fancy cuisine were some stale chips and a few old bananas, but Vernon was very cheerful, clearly proud of outwitting Harry's mysterious correspondent.

A ferocious storm starting during the night, thundering rumbling in time with Harry's stomach, and as Dudley's watch ticked closer and closer to midnight, Harry had to wonder if tomorrow would take the record for his worst birthday ever- when he heard a knock at the door.

* * *

The knocking was tremendously loud- Harry could hear Dudley murmuring faintly about a cannon- and Vernon come charging out, a rifle in his hands. "Who's there? I'm warning you, I'm armed!"

The door was knocked off its hinges and sent falling to floor as a goliath of a man entered the building, his great black mane brushing the ceiling as he crouched inside the tiny hut. With remarkable ease, he turned and reattached the door to its frame before addressing Vernon.

"Could'ja make us a cup o' tea? It's not been an easy journey…" he walked (as much as a man his size could walk while in a house so much larger than him) over to Dudley. "Budge up, yeh great lump."

Harry decided that this was probably going to be his best birthday yet, especially when the man pulled out a cake (that was, admittedly, squashed) and sausages. The man seemed familiar with Harry, but Harry wasn't familiar with the man. He seemed amicable enough, so Harry looked up at the man and started asking questions. "I'm sorry… but who are you, exactly?'

"Call me Hagrid, everyone does. I'm Keeper of the Keys at Hogwarts- yeh know all about it, right?" Harry didn't- and that infuriated him. He could admit that he wouldn't know everything, of course, but Harry was struck with the feeling of missing something vital, something attached to the letters, whoever was watching them, whatever the Dursleys were trying to stamp out.

Harry cringed, but continued. "Er- Hogwarts?"

Hagrid froze. "Yeh don't know about Hogwarts? I knew yeh weren't getting' yer letters, but I never thought yeh wouldn't have heard of Hogwarts! Where did yeh think yer parents learned it all?"

"All… what?"

The man leapt to his feet, nearly knocking his head against the roof of the ramshackle hut; although Harry honestly thought that the hut would give way before this giant did. He turned to Vernon, who was cowering against the wall. "Yeh never told him about anything? Our world… his parents world?"

"My parents world?" Of course, Hagrid can't have been talking about another planet, so he had to have been talking about some kind of… secret society, maybe?

Hagrid grew red and sent a glare Vernon's way. "But yeh gotta know about yer mum and dad- they're famous, you're famous."

"My parents… I barely know anything."

"Yeh don't know? Know what yeh are?"

Harry gulped, this was the moment of truth. "What am I?"

Vernon, found his voice and tried to stop Hagrid from giving him his answer- the answer. "Stop! I forbid you! Don't tell the boy a thing!"

"Yeh didn't tell him what was in Dumbledore's-" Okay, who was Dumbledore "-letter? I saw him put that letter on yer doorstep! And yeh hid it for all these years?"

Harry was almost tempted to jump in, but decided not to as Vernon prepared another one of his trademark witty comebacks. "NO! I forbid you! I've spent more than a decade keeping that wickedness out of my home-"

Hagrid sighed in disappoint before turning to Harry, crouching low to look him in the eyes, suddenly becoming a far more gentle giant. "Yer a wizard, Harry."

"What?" No way, the man couldn't be telling the truth, no way there were actually-

"A wizard, and I'd wager a pretty darn good one, once yeh get some learnin' in yeh. With parents like yours…" He gave Harry a letter, just the same as the dozens that had flooded the home on Privet Drive, and with shaking fingers Harry worked the yellow parchment of the envelope open, the brilliant green ink assuring him that yes, this letter was for him.

* * *

What followed next was a bit of a blur, Hagrid pulling out an actual, bona fide owl from his coat to send a letter to this Dumbledore, a man with no shortage of titles, the most important of which to Harry was Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Presumably he'd be in the man's care for the coming school year- Harry hoped he wouldn't be too busy with his other roles to keep an eye on the school. Clearly, Hagrid loved the man, and zealously defended his reputation- with magic!

This was followed up by the massive shock of learning about the truth of his parent's deaths, and this mysterious Voldemort, more commonly known as You-Know-Who who attempted to kill him but for some reason failed, and was possibly dead? This was all raising more questions than answers, but Harry's confusion had rapidly morphed into eager excitement. Actual magic- imagine that! Did magic work in space? Could you use to teleport between planets? Were there wizard cities on the moon?

The next day Hagrid was going to bring him to Diagon Alley, to go shopping. Unfortunately, Harry probably wouldn't have enough money to get all the supplies he needed, or to indulge into research on space, but he was determined now. Without having to sink his grades below Dudley's, he was sure he could succeed in this wizarding world, not to mention his apparent fame. Getting to space would only be a matter of time.

* * *

After an introduction to the curious wizarding custom of post owls (couldn't you just… magic stuff to places, cut out the middlebird?) they prepared for a trip to Diagon Alley- to go shopping with money acquired from his vault. His vault in the goblin bank, who were apparently real creatures who actually existed.

Hagrid used some magic to speed their boat to the shore, and they were off- Hagrid gave him a few more pieces of information about the wizarding world, like their governing body, the Ministry of Magic, whose main focus was keeping magic hidden. Keeping magic hidden because you were lazy and didn't want to help the muggles was a bit of a bad look, but he wondered if they indulged in big projects like the muggle governments did.

After coming ashore, they traveled by train, and Hagrid started to knit as Harry studied the list of supplies they would be buying shortly. A very wizardly sounding uniform complete with a pointed hat, a long list of books (Harry was shaking with excitement when it came to that), and a great mix of other equipment: a wand, a cauldron, glass phials, scales… and a telescope set. Harry smiled big at that.

They walked through the bustling streets of London, great masses of people on their phones- which Hagrid dismissed as "some muggle device" without a second thought- until they eventually reached a pub, the Leaky Cauldron.

* * *

Getting mobbed at the Leaky Cauldron wasn't a great experience, but Diagon Alley was worth it. There was so much to see- stores full of more cauldron types than he could possibly imagine, sellers hawking body parts from creatures both magical and mundane, broomsticks, books, and quills- and the bank was beautiful, a towering building as white as the clouds with a great bronze door. The promise of money that could let him stand on his own, as well as some sort of connection to his parents… the gleaming bronze of those doors were practically the pearly gates.

Hundreds of goblins worked, taking records in their ledgers or examining gleaming coins and gems. Hagrid walked up to one of the tellers and greeted him. "Morning. We've come to take some money outta Mr. Harry Potter's safe."

"You have his key, sir?" Harry snapped out of his daze. His key? Just who was running his account?

"Got it somewhere." Hagrid grumbled, digging through his pockets as he dropped old dog biscuits all over the pristine marble floor. Harry was half expecting an owl or some other creature to pop out of the coat, but eventually he fished out a tiny golden key. The goblin examined it as keenly as Harry did, and he couldn't help but wonder who exactly was in charge of his accounts- and why did they give the key to Hagrid?

"An' I've also got a letter here from Professor Dumbledore." Somehow, Hagrid managed to both puff up with pride and sink low, as if he was telling the goblin a secret. "It's about the You-Know-What in vault seven hundred and thirteen."

Harry could practically sense the capitalization in that "You-Know-What" and he had to wonder why wizards were so fond of describing things in the most round about way possible. The goblin analyzed the letter, and apparently it met his standards. He called over another goblin named Griphook, who led Harry and Hagrid deeper into the bank.

He almost wanted to ask Hagrid about the mystery item in vault seven hundred and thirteen, but he supposed that the man probably wasn't going to spill any secrets that Dumbledore insisted he keep. So Harry tried to soak in the bank- would the goblins let him look at the details of his accounts? Admittedly, he didn't have much experience with budgeting, but especially considering how expensive several of his future plans might be he needed to manage his parent's legacy well.

The minecart ride was incredibly fast and jerked from side to side without being steered by Griphook, and Harry suddenly wondered if you could enchant a car to drive itself- did wizards use cars? There weren't any in Diagon Alley…

Eventually the cart came to a shrieking halt in a wide cavern which had a collection of doors on its walls. As Hagrid rested against one of the walls, Harry looked to his goblin guide. "So, Mr. Griphook, which one of these doors is my vault?"

The goblin chuckled. "All of them are your vaults, Mr Potter. However, for now the only vault you can open is your trust vault, which should prove more than sufficient to provide for your schooling. When you reach adulthood at seventeen you can access the rest."

Harry was excited now. "Even if I can't open the other vaults, what sort of stuff is inside? Family heirlooms, ancient tomes?"

"The other vaults store the majority of your liquid assets, in addition to some particular heirlooms. The majority of those… 'ancient tomes' would be found in Potter Manor's library."

Potter Manor? He had properties too? Harry was practically shaking with excitement when Griphook unlocked the smallest of the doors, and Harry stepped inside to see great mounds of gleaming gold and silver coins as a grin broke out on his face.

Hagrid had apparently recovered enough to help Harry shovel some of his newly discovered riches into a bag, and he also explained conversion rates. "The golden ones are Galleons, the silver ones are Sickles, the bronze ones are Knuts. Twenty nine knuts to the sickle and seventeen sickles to the galleon." Hagrid turned to Griphook. "Could we go to vault seven hundred and thirteen now? Maybe… a little slower?"

Griphook gave him a fierce smile. "One speed only." Hagrid groaned, and Harry started wondering. He didn't know the prices of gold and silver off the top of his head, but that seventeen to one ratio sounded… off.

"Mr. Griphook, are all these coins pure gold and silver?"

The goblin seemed offended at that, and Harry flushed. Accusing the goblins of financial shenanigans would not be a good look. "Of course, Mr. Potter."

"Do you mint the coins here? If a wizard brought you pure silver or gold, could you process it into coins?"

"Yes, for a fee." Harry wondered if the magical world had alchemists, and if you could just magic up some gold and have it made into galleons. However, that would probably ruin the economy...

Speaking of ruining the economy… "And do you convert between muggle and magical currencies?"

The goblin nodded. "The tellers do, yes. For muggleborn wizards who don't have vaults." The cart came to a stop in front of the vault, but Harry was lot in thought. With a bit of work, couldn't you run a racket by moving sums of money between the magical and muggle worlds? If the goblin minting fee was small enough, you could make money just by shuffling gold and silver around, although you might get in trouble with the government- or the goblins. Harry had too much to do, he couldn't get himself locked up in a vault with a dragon somewhere.

Hagrid emptied the vault- which wasn't saying much, considering how there was just a single package in there- before they returned to the bank's entrance.

* * *

After returning to the main hall of the bank, he convinced Hagrid to sit down for a bit while Harry investigated the specifics of his accounts.

Once Harry could conclusively prove his identity (by pricking his finger so the goblins could perform a blood test) they were more than happy to inform him about the specifics of his accounts, and gave him long ledgers full of information, Interesting stuff, but Harry couldn't stop their shopping trip to look at them in detail. Maybe he should look into some books on accounting?

He did make sure to exchange a significant portion of his galleons for muggle pounds, and the goblins sold him a wallet which was charmed so it could only be opened by him. It wasn't cheap, but it was a worthwhile investment, especially if it kept his money safe from the Dursleys.

* * *

Hagrid guided him to Madam Malkins to get his robes fitted, but then headed off to the Leaky Cauldron, in order to recover from the cart ride. In all honesty Harry felt that if the man was supposed to be looking after him, he should actually be following his movements, but Harry certainly wasn't complaining about increased autonomy.

He got his robes fitted and met a boy there- he didn't get a name, but he was haughty and very certain he would end up in Slytherin, whatever that was. Harry was saving the bookstore for last, and tried to conserve his admittedly significant funds. As fancy as a solid gold cauldron might be, the letter demanded pewter (although Harry made sure to stock up on phials and brewing supplies. He'd probably make quite a few mistakes at first), and he got a plain set of scales as well. The telescopes were a little disappointing- he asked if any where enchanted to increase magnification or something like that, but the clerk seemed more amused by his queries than anything- what did Harry plan on doing with with a telescope like that, count all the craters on the moon?

It seemed like wizards were more focused on constellations and the movements of the planets rather than what secrets those planets and stars might hold, and Harry decided that researching magnification was high on his list. Maybe, once all the Potter properties were under his control, he could build an observatory? Maybe he could see where the Apollo craft landed…

Eventually, Harry approached the wand shop, one Ollivander's, and while he wasn't quite as excited for a wand as he was for books, it was still exhilarating. A real wand!

* * *

The shop smelled of dust, but the air seemed to be humming with potential- was this what magic felt like? He was so distracted by the shop's atmosphere he didn't notice Mr Ollivander until he popped up behind him and gave a gentle greeting. "Good afternoon."

Harry turned to look Mr Ollivander in the eyes- so pale!- and responded. "Hello."

"I've been expecting you, Harry Potter. I suspected I would be seeing you soon." Well that raised all sorts of questions- was he just a creepy weird old man, or was he some kind of seer? Did the wizards have actual seers and would Harry learn about it at school?

Ollivander continued. "You have your mother's eyes. It seems like only yesterday she was here, buying her first wand. Ten and a quarter inches, swishy and made of willow. Good for charm work."

Harry could feel curiosity now- as creepy as Ollivander was, he clearly knew more about his parents then Harry did. "Your father, on the other hand, favored a mahogany wand. Eleven inches. Pliable. A little more power and excellent for transfiguration. Well I say your father favored it, but the wand chooses the wizard."

He leaned in close, looking at Harry's scar, and he frowned. "I'm sorry to say I sold the wand that made that scar. Thirteen and a half inches, yew. A powerful wand… and in the wrong hands…" He shook his head sadly, before starting to take measures with a long tape.

"Every Ollivander wand has a core made of a powerful magical substance. Here, we use three- unicorn hairs, phoenix feathers, and dragon heartstrings- and wands tend to be as unique as the animals they came from. No two are alike."

Harry went through an awful lot of wands, both long and short, with just about every type of wood and length he could imagine. Ollivander seemed to enjoy it though and perceived it as a challenge more than anything, and he eventually pulled out a wand with a bit of chuckle. "This is an unusual one- walnut and phoenix feather. An interesting combination, to be sure."

He gave the wand to Harry, and it just seemed to click, sending a burst of warmth up Harry's arm, and when he gave the wand a swing it let out a tremendous stream of brilliant blue lights, like stars. Ollivander chuckled. "An interesting combination- this will be a very versatile wand, Mr. Potter. Still, it is curious that of all wands, this one chooses you…"

"What's curious about it?"

"The same phoenix that gave a feather for this wand gave one other- and the wand I made from that feather… it gave you that scar." Harry paid the man appropriately and left- there was something unnerving about Ollivander, and no amount of trivia about his parents was worth any more time in that dusty building.

* * *

Harry made one more stop before going to the bookstore- he checked in at a place that sold magical trunks of all sorts. Massive trunks that towered above Harry and rested on actual legs, as if they could stand up and move by themselves, tiny little ones carved with complex runes, or even one trunk with a pair of actual feathery wings on it!

He didn't want anything particularly showy, and was focused on two particular factors: security and storage. Having some sort of magic in place to keep it from getting pilfered would be a relief, and Harry wanted to make sure he could actually move all of the books he planned on getting around.

Of course, Harry didn't know much about these sorts of things, so he asked the shopkeeper, a kind looking woman with long brown hair that knelt down to speak to Harry in a way that felt a little condescending. "Can I help you, young man? Have you lost your parents?"

He could feel his cheeks flushing in embarrassment, but decided against saying something silly like 'my parents are dead'. No use in exposing himself as a celebrity here. "Oh, my parents are handling some business at Gringotts, and they wanted me to pick out a trunk for Hogwarts." He gave the most saccharine smile he could manage, and the lady seemed to buy it.

She smiled and led him to a row of relatively normal looking trunks, without crazy colors or any particularly evident features. "These are the usual trunks that most students buy, without any particular charms other than whatever your parents want to apply for you."

"Oh well, I don't want to inconvenience my mom and dad… and I want to bring a lot of books to school, so is there a trunk that has magical expansions? Is that a thing trunks can have?"

"Well, they're more expensive than these ones, but we do." Harry smiled broadly.

* * *

The trunk Harry left the store with wasn't the most expensive model or anything like that, but he didn't particularly feel like splurging on something like dragon leather trunks, which were incredibly expensive due to the effort of enchanting dragon skin. His trunk was heavily enchanted to hold more than usual- there wasn't an entire room on the inside or anything, but there was lots of storage space- more than enough to hold all of his school supplies, along with several compartments which he could devote solely to books. As tempting as having a room in his trunk would be, it would be a shame if he got carted off while inside.

That left him with book shopping, which he was definitely excited for. He headed into Flourish and Blott's, and was immediately amazed- the books were stacked to the ceiling. After Harry got his hands on all the books he needed for school, he started browsing- if reading about the space program taught him anything, it was that he needed to scout out this strange new world he was entering. You wouldn't try to land on the moon without knowing how big it was, its gravity, etc, so Harry needed to know everything about the magical world. Jumping in with no preparation would be like trying to use parachutes on the moon- his normal assumptions wouldn't work in the magical world.

Books on wizarding culture weren't too easy to find- Harry had a sinking feeling that there was a lot of stuff he was just 'supposed' to know, and the wizards weren't going to wait for him to catch up. Harry did manage to find introductions to some other fields though: magical history (books other than the one Hogwarts recommended, of course. He wanted other points of view), things like Arithmancy and Runes, and a few books on basic theory. Nothing too complex, of course, and even then the shopkeepers warned him that Arithmancy and Runes were for third years, apparently, but Harry bought them anyways.

Runes in particular were fascinating- he wasn't sure about the specifics of how magic worked at range, but runes reminded him of a little of how drones and long range probes were made. Prepare something that could basically manage itself and then let it fly! Of course, he wasn't expecting to make a rover within a few days or even months, but it was all so exciting!

Harry bought a lot of books, and he stuffed them all into his trunk, with space left to spare- just as he planned. He hoped to eventually loop around to a muggle bookstore to get some nonfiction to read at Hogwarts- he almost considering grabbing a device or some sort of e-reader, but he realized that they probably didn't have power outlets in Hogwarts- not to mention what the Dursleys would do if he got his hands on any devices.

By the time he headed back towards the Leaky Cauldron, it was late, and the sun was beginning to set; however, Hogwarts was still waiting for him, and he even had something- a beautiful, snow white owl in a cage along with a bag full of… stuff.

"Harry! It's good to see yeh! I got somethin' for yeh, yer birthday…" He held up the cage and the bag, which was full of… owl treats? There was also a thin little book with a simple title: "Taking Care of Your Owl"

He could feel warmth in his cheeks- this was the first real, genuine birthday gift that anyone had ever given him, and he couldn't help but smile. "Thank you, Hagrid!" Along with the gratitude, Harry felt something else- this owl was his now, his responsibility, and Hagrid was trusting him to take care of it- he should read the owl care book first, because there was no way he was letting Hagrid down.

Afterwards, Hagrid gave Harry his ticket and headed away- in fact, he disappeared into thin air. Harry would have to learn that trick eventually.

* * *

His stay at the Dursley's wasn't too bad, honestly. Of course, he wasn't expecting familial warmth from them or anything, but they were fine with leaving him be in his new room, which gave him all the time he needed to read.

The book on owl care said names were critical, somehow linked to the magic that let the birds do their work, so Harry dug up a name from his textbooks- Hedwig. She was beautiful, and Harry got to see her comings and goings as he stayed up late into the night, trying to read at least some of all his books.

Charms and Transfiguration were definitely food for thought. Could you hover a payload straight up to orbit, maybe? Or at east raise it to a point where the atmosphere wasn't as thick? Could Charms make it more aerodynamic or could you transfigure rocket parts mid-flight? Potions didn't seem to have as many practical applications when it came to spaceflight, but it was still fascinating- it was basically like cooking, just with stranger ingredients.

Runes and Arithmancy were a little above his head- he hadn't quite gotten to level of math skill he needed to understand the complexities of it- and for a moment Harry wondered where wizarding kids learned math and reading. Was there Hogwarts Primary he wasn't invited to? Of course, Harry had to wonder how he would keep up with his more normal studies- science and math books weren't on the supply list, but Harry refused to fall behind.

The books on Muggle Studies he read were downright condescending, if not extremely worrying. He had to wonder if the chap who wrote he book had actually seen any of London outside of Diagon Alley, or if he had done some 'field research' to support his conclusions that muggles hadn't evolved that much since 1692- maybe he walked into a Sealed Knot reenactment of the English Civil War? They seemed to acknowledge some inventions like radio, but acted like wizards had perfected the art- as if! However, it seemed that the magical ministry's main function was to keep magic a secret no matter the cost, and while they did stuff like policing now, they were built around keeping the muggles mugged, so to speak.

Some part of Harry cried out at the idea of hiding all this world changing knowledge, how much of an injustice it all was. Honestly, it seemed like the magical world were protecting themselves from having to catch up with the times and face the muggle world, and this Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office sounded like they could really throw a wrench in his plans. That is, if they caught him, of course.

It would be no small feat to basically run a space program by himself- he would need to keep the Ministry off his back, which would probably be helped when he turned seventeen and had an entire estate to himself, but the Muggles were concerning too. Clearly, they hadn't managed to discover magic yet (or at least, if anyone had they were keeping it secret) and Harry assumed that magic had some sort of effect on more recent gadgets- maybe it fried digital devices? Of course, space was going to be a different beast all together, but Harry thought he could manage it- if Diagon Alley could be kept secret in the middle of London, surely Harry could sneak a few satellites into the depths of space?

Harry took notes into a journal he had bought in Diagon Alley, trying to get used to these quills that wizards were so fond of. He would have preferred a simple pen, but when in Rome… Most of the notes were about potential applications for magic, but he also thought about his potential relationship with the Ministry in the future. He didn't want to imagine what sort of punishments they might deal out for what he was planning, but if worse came to worse, Harry wouldn't weep about collapsing the entire Statute of Secrecy.

It would certainly be the nuclear option when it came to getting the government off of his tail, but at the end of the day it shouldn't be too hard to do. His books mentioned close saves where liberal use of mind magic, Oblivation (which was terrifying, honestly. Harry needed to look into a way to counteract that) had managed to save the secret from getting out… But careful application of magic could probably get Harry in front of a TV camera, which could blow the whole case wide open, especially with the internet. Make a mess too big for any number of wizards to fix, and he was home free- if things ever came to that, of course.


	2. Express

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm thinking about how to handle Dumbledore. He won't be like, mustache-twirling evil or anything, but just looking at his choices during the series… it's very worrying, and I wouldn't blame Harry for being unwilling to forgive or trust Dumbledore. The way he gets everyone on board with his grandfatherly persona… you can read him in a very insidious light.

Harry decided that having a solid plan for the coming years would be a good place to start- just thinking "I want to go to space" was a nice sentiment, but it didn't get him anywhere. There were certainly a few steps Harry had to take before he reached cosmic domination, and you could broadly divide them into a few categories.

Sadly, he was at the very beginning of what he decided to call the ground phase. For now, all he could do was gather resources and intelligence for his future plans- it was critical, certainly, but it wasn't that glamorous. Fortunately, fundraising wasn't something he really had to worry about unless he really burnt through that trust fund of his. He had checked his financial records, and the goblins had done wonders managing his accounts- he was a _very_ lucky boy. Of course, it didn't make up for dead parents, but when he reached maturity, he wouldn't have to work a day in his life; however, that didn't mean he was going to get lazy, it just meant that he could invest his time into something that wouldn't normally be profitable. Wizards had a lot more freedom in this regard, he thought- they may not be able to summon food to eat, but a sufficiently skilled wizard would never starve.

With money more than handled, Harry could focus on research and gathering the sort of things that couldn't be bought with money, like making contacts or the like. Even with a month's worth of reading, Harry knew just how little he truly understood about magic- he could dream of possible applications, but until he he started learning specifics they were just dreams. Getting an education required other people- he might be able to teach himself, but going to magic school was going to be pretty important. Hopefully, he could make some friends there, both for the sake of friendship and so he had ties to the magical community. There were so many things he couldn't make on his own, even with tons of research, so it was better to let the experts handle it.

Of course, all of this stuff was very much in up in the air, so he couldn't really give a hard date for when stage two would begin. Stage two would follow in the muggle space program's footsteps- start with probes. Hopefully, this would let Harry really test out his inventions, but even then he needed to do a lot of testing in advance, mostly to cloak the satellites properly. It might take years to get the appropriate charms, but he could not get himself busted by either government, magical or mundane. Hopefully, Harry would succeed in negotiating a happy marriage between magic and technology- magitek, if you would.

Hopefully he could figure out some way to combine the two without ruining the muggle technology, but he supposed that if he really couldn't manage he could try something like the spacecraft magnetometers- just stick the magical parts (or the technological parts) on a boom away from the main craft. Magnetometers needed to be away from the body of the ship or the ship itself would interfere with the measures taken, and you might be able to pull off the same trick with magical components?

Would the same sort of magic that propelled a broomstick work in outer space? That would be the best case scenario, although Harry supposed that magic could make running a normal rocket engine a lot easier- he had seen diagrams, and they were great messes of pipes and valves that he couldn't replicate in years. Maybe he could just gigantify a model rocket?

Hopefully, magic would make getting to space easier- something crazy like a space elevator might be possible with magic, but once again it wasn't feasible until he had his own land to keep it on, not to mention all the work that would be needed to keep a several mile long enchanted chord from being discovered by anyone. Hopefully, he could just teleport payloads to orbit without having to spend resources on the middleman, eventually.

From orbit, the sky wasn't even the limit anymore. Of course, he wanted to check out the moon before trying anything interplanetary, but there was a lot of potential just nearby Earth- comets or asteroids, possibly? If he could manage to start harvesting gold or other precious metals… he would never have to worry about funding at all. Or maybe it would just be a different worry… Harry thought crashing the wizarding economy through hyperinflation was probably a bad idea. The moon was no slouch either: silica, alumina, iron, lime… even water ice! And that was just the beginning! The cosmos were waiting!

* * *

Harry convinced Vernon to drop him off near King's Cross early in the morning, and he was happy to oblige: the sooner Harry got out of his hair, the better. Standing in King's Cross, Harry was almost tempted to run off and get some muggle stuff before he went- he could feel the weight of pound bills in his pocket, thanks to the tellers at Gringotts. He had initially planned a long shopping trip to a muggle bookstore, but he realized that rolling a suitcase in might look a little suspect, not to mention the large amount of cash on his person. He did have something interesting though: he had managed to get one of Dudley's abandoned devices working- he wasn't using it for its intended purpose, but rather as a test to see what exactly magic broke in these devices, if it broke them at all.

Now the question was simple: where was Platform 9 and ¾? Harry decided to head in the direction of platforms 9 and 10, just to scout the area out. Maybe it was something like how you got into Diagon Alley, and it just required a magician's touch?

After a few minutes of waiting, a family walked up, quietly talking among themselves, and they certainly seemed packed for a trip- or at least their kid did. A good sign, especially when the approached the barrier between 9 and 10, as their voices got louder. "You're sure this it?" The father seemed skeptical, and looked down at his daughter with a questioning expression.

The girl nodded, her bushy brown hair bobbing up and down enthusiastically. "Yes, dad. McGonagall said to just walk on through," and sure enough, the girl pushed her trolley through the barrier as if it wasn't there and her parents followed close behind. Harry waited a few seconds to make sure he wouldn't be slamming into anyone, and then followed close behind.

He couldn't help but stare in awe- this entire platform was just hidden away, presumably between 9 & 10? It was insane, and very good proof that there was a lot of potential in space expansion magic if that was what accomplished this. Imagine holding all the food and water you would need for a trip inside a single suitcase- heck, you could just have gardens to grow the food instead!

A massive engine painted a bright red stood on the platform, and Harry could hear many heartfelt goodbyes as he pulled his trolley to the train. It hadn't started up quite yet, so Harry seemed to have gotten to the platform nice and early. Lifting his suitcase up onto the train wasn't easy, but he had time to work at it and he got on without any real issues, taking a compartment near the back of the train.

Of course, he pulled out a book and started reading. He wondered when it was okay to start using magic- was it alright now that he was on the train, or should he wait until they left the station or when they arrived at the school proper? What would the school be like? After a bit more pondering, Harry shrugged and got back to reading.

* * *

After a bit of reading, there was a knocking on his compartment door, and Harry looked up to see a boy with bright red hair coming in. "Hello there. Can I grab a seat? My brothers wondered off."

"Sure." Harry scooted over a little and patted the seat next to him.

"Thanks, mate. What are you reading?"

"Figured I'd brush up on some of my school books before we arrive, you know?"

"Brush up? You've been been reading them before?" The boy seemed a little shocked.

"Of course. Got my books a month ago and couldn't put them down."

"Are you muggleborn?"

Muggleborn? Harry supposed that meant a wizard born from non magical parents, like his mum (at least he thought his maternal grandparents weren't wizards). Harry wasn't sure how to feel about the fact that there was already a pre-made term for that. "I had magic parents, but raised with muggles, so I suppose I'm muggleborn in all but blood."

After a few seconds, his mysterious companion groaned. "Aww, I forgot to introduce myself. I'm Ron. What's your name?" He extended a hand to shake and smiled.

Harry took his hand and shook as he replied. "Harry Potter." Ron nearly choked.

"Wait, you're the Harry Potter?"

"I suppose I am _the_ Harry Potter, unless there's another one running around somewhere."

"Do you really have…" Ron was staring at his forehead, where his scar was.

"I do, yeah."

"Can… can I see it?" Harry sighed and pushed back his bangs to show his scar. "Is that where he, you know…"

You know what? Harry wanted to make friends, but he really didn't want people around who were completely transfixed on his scar. "Yes. Voldemort-" Ron cringed, "-put it there, right after _he murdered my parents_."

Ron gulped. "I'm sorry-"

"It's fine, I just don't want to be known for that, you know? Plus, what are the chances that I was the reason behind it? Who's to say my mum or dad didn't cast some final spell or weaken Voldemort or something?"

Ron scratched his chin. "Suppose I never thought about that. Guess everyone just thinks you're a hero, maybe because of the books?"

The _what?_ Harry looked over to Ron. "What books are you talking about?"

Ron flushed. "Well, they're these storybooks, you know. Bedtime stories that my mum would read sometimes, where you'd get up to hijinks and have adventures, ya' know?"

Harry most certainly did not know. He supposed that would explain the myth building, but his main question was who exactly built this myth? This wasn't the sort of thing that could just pop up overnight, especially considering the mysterious circumstances surrounding the whole thing. Why was the take away 'Harry Potter, boy wonder'? In fact, who reported the news at all? How did it get out that he was the only survivor?

The books were a little annoying, and Harry found the idea of an entire generation of children raised on an idealized version of him a little horrifying, but he didn't see the purpose in bleeding the author dry or anything. He had all the money he'd ever need, but he definitely wanted to make sure that his name wasn't being used to fund raise for something suspect. Hopefully, he could make his own name due to his own achievements, and not a bunch of hype from when he was a baby.

Of course, this rose a major question: who was supposed to be looking after him? Surely, the wizarding world had some sorts of precautions in place- considering that Ron had to specify muggleborn, they were their own society, where children were born and raised (could a wizard go completely under the muggle radar, from womb to tomb, without the muggle government ever being aware of their existence?). Surely, his parents had some sort of plan in place- well, he supposed they could have chosen to leave him with the Dursleys, but who let the wizarding world go hog wild with his name? Surely someone should have sat down and asked the (presumably) only living Potter about these things?

Harry just wanted to go to school and learn enough to get the heck off of this planet- why did things have to be so complicated?

Harry was snapped out of his thinking by a kindly looking old woman who was pushing a cart full of all sorts of sweets and treats. His first thought, immediately, was frugality- don't spend, you might need it later- but considering his newfound wealth, he decided to indulge a little. Plus, the least he could in the wizarding world was try a bit of the food.

Ron was looking at the cart in amazement, and Harry sighed. "Anything interest you? I'll buy us two."

Ron grinned. "You've got to try the chocolate frogs! They've got collectable cards too!"

Okay, now that was interesting. These were basically the wizarding equivalent of baseball cards- what sort of people did they put on these cards? Harry bought them two, and unwrapped his to reveal a card depicting an old man by the name of Albus Dumbledore. This was the man who would be in charge of their schooling, huh? Harry swore he could see the eyes twinkling- before the face winked at him.

"It moved!"

Ron chuckled. "Of course it does! Did you think he'd just stand still all day?" As Harry flipped over the card to read the blurb on the back- yes, alchemy was real!- he contemplated what life must be like, as an enchanted baseball card. He hoped the poor thing wasn't sapient- was it just a lifelike simulation of the real thing, charmed to react to stimuli?

Harry turned over the card, and feeling a little silly, gave a wave, and card Dumbledore responded in kind. Good grief, he really hoped that magicians didn't just create a full-fledged intelligence for the purpose of collectable cards. Maybe it was kind of like an AI, but with broader rules? Enchant the image to respond with the socially appropriate response, or maybe the response that the observer expected? Heck, weren't humans just very complex systems responding to external stimuli?

Before Harry could spiral into an existential crisis questioning what it meant to be intelligent, there was another knocking at the door, and a round faced boy peaked into the compartment, looking worried. "Sorry, but have you seen a toad around?"

Harry and Ron shrugged. "Haven't seen one, but have you tried asking one of the upper years? They probably know some sort of magic to find it."

"Thank you… I'll give it a try." He wondered off, presumably to find someone to help him out.

"A toad, huh? It's a bit worse than a rat." Ron sighed and brought out a rat of his own- it was a scraggly looking thing and looked half dead. "Tried to turn him yellow yesterday to make him a little less boring."

He pulled out a wand that looked like it had seen better days- it was chipped and damaged in places, and Harry was suddenly worried about it backfiring. Before Harry could voice his concerns, the door opened again to reveal the toadless boy- or perhaps that was the wrong term because he was now carrying one toad- and a bushy haired girl, the same one that Harry had followed onto the platform, although she was wearing her school robes now.

The round faced boy spoke up. "Thank you… one of the upper years found my frog using magic."

Harry smiled. "I'm glad to have helped. My name is Harry Potter, what's yours?"

The boy's eyes widened and the girl audibly gasped before she started talking. "Wait, really?"

"I'm apparently _the_ Harry Potter, yes."

"You're in books, you know. Modern Magical History, The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts, Great Wizarding Events of the Twentieth Century." Okay, Harry would need to pick those books up- or maybe borrow them from this girl. Everyone was coming to this school with preformed notions about what he would be like, and he didn't know anything!

"Interesting. I was more interested in reading about magic and what it could do than magical history, in all honesty." Harry turned to the boy and his toad. "And what's your name?"

"I'm Neville Longbottom." The two wondered off, and Harry decided that he should probably start changing into his robes.

* * *

Eventually a few more people visited their compartment- the haughty blonde boy he had met at Madam Malkin's, along with two boys who were unusually bulky for their age and followed the blonde like they were guards.

The blond boy was obviously interested in Harry, and spoke to him while ignoring Ron. "Is it true? Are you Harry Potter?"

"The one and only." Harry was going to get real tired of this whole celebrity thing. "Well you know my name, but I don't know yours. Can you introduce yourself and your charming companions?"

"My… friends here are Crabbe and Goyle, and my name is Malfoy. Draco Malfoy." He looked exceedingly proud of his family name, and Harry could hear Ron trying to cover a snort.

"Think my name's funny, do you?" Harry did think it was a little melodramatic, but who was he judge wizarding names? "No need to ask who you are. My father told me all about you Weasleys."

Draco turned to Harry. "You'll find that some wizarding families are better than others, Potter. You shouldn't be falling in with the wrong sort."

Harry looked him in the eyes before he sighed. "I'll be honest. I don't really care much for family names. If you're going to try to win me over, impress me with your actions."

Draco chuckled. "You're an interesting sort, Potter. I'm sure you'll find that our sort are a step above the riff-raff."

"Then I can't wait to see you prove it." Harry grinned.

* * *

When the train came to a stop, it was evening and the forests and mountains of Scotland were bathed in gentle twilight. They were told to leave their luggage on train and that it would be taken to the school separately from them.

Students poured onto the platform like a torrent, and Hagrid herded the first years down a steep and narrow path composed of slippery, rain-soaked stones that wound through a thick forest. They made a turn and they suddenly reached a tremendous lake with a towering castle on its other side.

Hagrid seemed to have predicted that everyone would stop to gawk at splendid sight of Hogwarts, and after a moment or two of awe-struck silence he cried out. "Get onto the boats everyone! Four kids to a boat!"

Harry found himself in a boat with Neville, Hermione and Ron, while Hagrid had an entire boat to himself- unless a child had somehow vanished into the folds of his vast coat. "Everyone in? Right then." He paused for a moment before shouting loudly, "FORWARD!" For a single second Harry wondered if he wanted them to start rowing, or if this was some sort of sink-or-swim magical test, but then the boats all cast off in perfect sync- of course, it was magic.

The lake was as smooth as glass and reflected the starry sky above them, giving the impression that they were hanging suspended in the stars. Harry couldn't help but wonder if this was what space would look like- even Hogwarts helped establish that conclusion, the brilliant lights of the windows gleaming like stars.

Soon enough, they were close to the great, dark cliff face that supported the castle's many towers; fortunately, there was a cave that the boats entered into instead of crashing against the rock face, and Harry could long strands of ivy brushing past his face and hair. The tunnel was dark, but eventually they reached something of an underground harbor illuminated only by an old fashioned lamp that Hagrid carried.

Hagrid scooped up a toad from another boat and passed it to Neville. Had it gotten away again? There had to be some sort of magical method to track an animal, right? Neville clutched the little toad close to his breast out of a justified fear that he might hop away again as Hagrid lead them through a tunnel carved into the dark, damp stone.

Eventually they caught a hint of the stars and the tunnel opened up to a small flat of grass just outside of the castle, a great wooden door towering above them. Hagrid knocked on the door, and despite its massive size it swung open in moments- probably magic.

A stern looking, dark haired witch stood at the doorway, and Hagrid greeted her. "The firs' years, Professor McGonagall." The name seemed to ring a bell, and Harry realized that Hermione had mentioned the woman at King's Cross- Harry had this woman to thank, although indirectly, for getting onto the platform, he supposed.

"Thank you, Hagrid. I'll take them from here." She opened the door wide enough to let everyone into a massive hall, and Harry could hear a faint murmuring, presumably the rest of the students. He wondered how the other students got there- maybe if he asked nicely, the school would let him row a boat onto the lake some other time? He could have sat there forever, just gawking at the stars.

McGonagall led them into a small chamber that could barely fit all the students, and turned to give them a speech. "Welcome to Hogwarts…"

* * *

Harry finally had an explanation for what exactly these houses were- the four were basically a sort of way to sort out the students into more manageable groups. Everyone was chattering about how exactly they planned on sorting everyone into these houses, rumors about some sort of test.

While taking a test in front of the school sounded pretty scary, Harry felt he had a pretty good understanding of the basics- they couldn't expect first year students to know that much, right? If it was an academic test, sorting students according to their abilities, he supposed that might make a little sense, although that would probably breed resentment.

Everyone was snapped out of their speculation by a few screams of terror at the back of the room, and Harry turned, drawing his wand- to see a group of translucent white ghosts coming through the wall, holding conversations even while standing inside a wall or waist deep in a horrified student. They spoke among themselves for a bit before McGonagall returned and told them to move along.

They formed a long line and followed McGonagall into the splendid hall, which was lit by thousands of floating candles and filled with hundreds of students sitting at tables set with golden plates and cutlery. Looking up, Harry was shocked to see the stars above him, the great course of the Milky Way going down the length of the hall. Maybe it was some sort of magical ceiling? If so, Harry would definitely have to install one of those in his eventual home.

At the front of the hall, near a table where the teachers sat, McGonagall placed a simple four legged stool on the ground before plopping an ancient looking, dirty hat on the stool. It twitched before a great rip opened in its side and it began to sing.

Harry couldn't help but stare- the sheer complexity of a magical artifact like this! He supposed you could probably enchant an object to sing a pre-programmed song, but the hat seemed to imply that it was sapient and could see inside their heads to discern where they truly belonged, in addition to composing songs.

McGonagall pulled out a long roll of parchment and began calling names, and students moved out of the line to sit on the stool and wear the hat. Harry had to wonder about the hat's mechanisms- it took longer on some students than others. Could it just naturally intuit the best fit for some students while it had to puzzle over others?

Hermione and Neville both made their way to the Gryffindors, while Malfoy found himself among the Slytherins. When his name was called out, Harry could hear whispers all throughout the hall- he supposed it made sense, considering that these kids were raised on stories of his triumph.

The hat was too big for him and fell down, leaving him completely in the dark. "Hmm. You're an interesting case, Potter. I've never quite seen anyone with goals like yours. You have the ambition for Slytherin, the diligence for Hufflepuff, the determination for Gryffindor, and you certainly have the Ravenclaw thirst for knowledge."

 _Just put me where I'll do best, please._ Harry thought.

"Ambition indeed, Potter. You'd do well in Slytherin."

Harry suddenly realized that this might be a once in a lifetime opportunity to speak with a unique magical artifact. _Say… Mr. Hat, are you… happy?_

He could hear a faint chuckle in his ears. "I've certainly never had anyone ask me that. I'm as happy as I can be- I'm fulfilling my purpose, what else do I need?"

_But you only fulfill your purpose for a few hours every year, presumably? Even if you take time to come up with new songs, wouldn't you just… go mad?_

"I may be like a human, but I am not. What sort of wizard would enchant an artifact with the ability to go mad? I may be sitting on a shelf most of the time, but it's still working towards my purpose."

_That's… admirable? I mean, I don't want to condemn an intelligent creature to infinite boredom for the sake of my own hobbies._

"Compassion towards things most wizards would see as objects… interesting. Back on topic, you would do well just about anywhere."

_Well then… can you put me where I'll find people who will understand me and my goals?_

"I'd recommend cooperating with people outside of your house, Mr. Potter. Students tend to box themselves in to their houses… but I'm sure you'll find some of your truest allies in… GRYFFINDOR!"

The Gryffindor table burst into applause, cheering and wooping as Harry pulled the hat off of his head and sat down at the table as a few people gloated. He could hear a couple of voices shouting "We got Potter! We got Potter!", and Harry could feel his cheeks flushing with embarrassment as the entire table stared at him.

With a seat at the Gryffindor table, Harry could analyze the teachers sitting at their table, and his eyes were drawn to the man sitting at the center of the table- the man whose chocolate frog card was sitting in his pocket. He looked rather grandfatherly- although Harry didn't have a grandfather he knew of to compare him to- with a long silver beard and eyes that seemed to be constantly sparkling.

After a few more kids were sorted, with Ron joining them at the Gryffindor table, the headmaster stood up and spread his arms wide, as if to embrace the entire student body. "Welcome! Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts! Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!"

Harry was glad the plates and goblets were empty- if he had been eating anything, he would he spewed it all over Neville's face. Everyone else was cheering, and Harry turned to a nearby prefect with brilliant red hair just like Ron's. "Is… Dumbledore a little mad?"

"Mad? He's brilliant, the best wizard of the age! But wizards like that are always a little out there. You want some potatoes, Harry?"

Harry looked down to see that all the plates in the halls were now filled with food of every variety, foods that the Dursleys had made him cook but never eat his fill of. His mind was buzzing- where did all of this food come from? They couldn't just generate food so it had to be moved from somewhere, right? Maybe they just teleported it from somewhere, like the kitchens? If so, what was the range on that sort of teleportation? Would it get harder and harder to do at greater ranges?

After Harry stuffed himself with all the meat and potatoes he could bear, the plates were cleared and replaced with every desert he could possibly imagine and some he had never heard of before. Harry thought he was full, but it was as if some hidden recess of his stomach had opened up, and he suddenly had room for more. He was determined to always eat his fill from now on… malnutrition would not help him achieve his goals, after all.

After washing his deserts down with pumpkin juice- which was actually much better than he expected- he decided to take another look at the teachers who would be in charge of his wizarding education for the next seven years. There was Dumbledore of course, along with McGonagall, but there quite a few others: a diminutive little man who seemed to be having issues reaching the table, a man with greasy black hair, and a man with a turban. As the turbaned man turned to talk with another teacher, Harry suddenly felt a sharp pain in his scar, and he hissed in pain.

"What is it?" The prefect was looking at him with concern on his face.

Some part of him screamed at him to just tell the nice prefect the truth… but Harry didn't have many good experiences with authority figures. "Nothing…" he muttered.

The prefect sighed. "Alright then, my job is as prefect is to make sure you're adjusted to the school. If You ever need help, you can ask Percy Weasley." Harry idly noted that he had the same last name as Ron- they must be siblings, or at least cousins or something.

What could have possibly caused that pain in his scar? It had never happened before as far as he could remember, and it only happened when he started looking at the teachers' table. Maybe it was just random chance… but Harry hadn't survived the Dursleys without a deep sense of paranoia and distrust of authority.

After Harry and the other students had stuffed themselves more thoroughly than they ever thought possible, Dumbledore rose to his feet. "Ahem, just some start of notices for all of you before we all go to bed."

"Firstly, the forest on the grounds is forbidden to all pupils, this is especially important for our first years… although it would do well for some of our older students to remember this as well." Harry could see him sending a glance at a pair of brilliantly red-headed twins that looked similar to both Percy and Ron. They were probably related.

"I have been asked to remind you that no magic should be used between classes in the corridors." Harry frowned a little at that- he had no plans for dueling in the halls, of course, but Harry did not like the idea of having his capacity for magic checked, even if it was mostly unimportant.

"Quidditch trials will be held in the second week of the term. Anyone interested in playing for their house teams should contact Madam Hooch." Harry wasn't sure what exactly Quidditch was, but magical sports sounded fun.

"And finally, I must tell you that this year, the third-floor corridor on the right hand side is out of bounds to everyone who does not wish to die a very painful death."

Okay, what? Not only was there something potentially fatal in the school, it was accessible? Why not just block it off, or maybe just use magic to brick up the doorway or hide the hall? That seemed like negligence- potentially fatal negligence.

* * *

After Dumbledore dismissed them, they followed Percy up many stair wells and even through some passages behind tapestries, the figures in paintings following their progress and moving from painting to painting with ease.

Along the way they were confronted by a poltergeist named Peeves who seemed to enjoy making a nuisance of himself. Percy eventually scared him off- if Peeves didn't just decide to wander off by himself- by threatening to call in a Bloody Baron.

Eventually they reached a painting depicting a fat lady, who looked up and questioned the Percy. "Password?"

"Caput Draconis." The painting swung to the side and they all scrambled inside the common room, a cozy place filled with squashy looking armchairs. Of course, Harry's mind was on the guardian of the room- the painting who could ask for a password. That was amazing! More proof that magical intelligences could do jobs and even impact the world around them. Could he make a painting to drive a spaceship or manage things for him?

Percy directed the girls up one spiral staircase and the boys up the other, and Harry found himself in a five person bedroom, with their luggage already there. Harry almost wanted to pull out a book and start reading, but decided that he should probably be well rested for his first official day of magical education.

He lay down in bed, but before he fell asleep he started brainstorming about his plans for the coming school year. His largest priority was to learn as much magic as possible and do as well in his classes as he possibly could, obviously. Before he could run (or rather fly to the moon) he needed to walk, and that meant the magical basics.

Sadly, his research had proved that he couldn't do magic at home while in a muggle household without getting into legal trouble, and that meant that he couldn't do much practicing while at home. Of course, he was basically going to use all of that time for research, but loosing his summers would be a setback. However, it turned out that some magical devices didn't fire off this Trace used to track down underage magic users… like broomsticks.

He had a feeling the Dursleys wouldn't look too kindly upon a genuine magic broomstick and it would probably get him in trouble with the ministry if he just used their backyard as a landing zone, so that was out too. Harry was more curious about how the broomstick worked- if they used runes in their operations, that presented the tempting possibility that all rune-based magic was undetectable by the Trace.

He didn't quite know enough about runes to start working on them independently, but he was in a building full of educated magicians and he might be able to beg them for some of the basics, or if that didn't work out… he was rich. Setting up contacts might be a generous way of putting it, but just commissioning older students to assemble runic arrays for him could work- he imagined that a lot of them would probably be interested in some pocket change and Harry had money to burn, although he did admit that an 11 year old being a patron of rune magic would be a strange look, but he certainly had the reputation to make friends in high places.

Maybe he could do some more research into broomsticks and their applications, especially about how they handled high altitudes and if they could be remote controlled. Sticking a magical camera of some kind on one end and controlling it from range would make a primitive probe, but it was something. At the moment, he hadn't even achieved flight yet, so that would be a major step. Even then, he would have troubles keeping his experiments a secret until he got his hands on some Potter properties, or maybe he could create a test sight somewhere relatively far flung on campus? Admittedly, wandering off into the Forbidden Forest to test secret magical projects wasn't the greatest of ideas, but there had to be somewhere around the castle where he could conduct his tests.

Harry was still unbearably excited though. He was here, at Hogwarts, where he could reach the heights of his magical potential and through that, the stars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to try not to make Ron or the Weasleys comically evil, but I imagine that their friendship will be rocky at first, if it ever really reaches fruition like in canon. Neville and Hermione gang.


	3. Classes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was considering a Ravenclaw or Slytherin Harry and I'm definitely imagining interhouse cooperation on Harry's part, especially some classic showing pureblood Slytherins fun muggle technology.
> 
> But why Gryffindor? I imagine it as the hat picking up on Harry's nerve and boldness, an endless drive to see what no man has ever seen before, stand on strange ground, etc. There's definitely a lot of Ravenclaw in him and he's curious, but for now that wisdom/research is a step on the way to space, so to speak. There's a lot of ambition there too, but also a bold, almost callous disregard for some rules.
> 
> I will warn you that today's chapter has some advanced speculation on how wizards view space and science in general. This is probably going to be pretty frequent for this fic.

They were given their schedules the next morning during breakfast, and Harry could feel everyone staring at him even as he tried to focus on his classes for the upcoming semester. Astronomy on Wednesday was going to be a fun one, especially since he would get to pick the brain of a wizard whose expertise was astronomy.

He piled his plate high with sausage, eggs, and toast before digging in, but all the while he had to wonder who was doing the cooking. Maybe one of the teachers would know? That probably wouldn't be the most normal of after-class questions, but he had to admit this food was pretty great. Space missions would certainly be better if he could have hot meals teleported in from Earth, and Harry wondered if he could convince the mysterious chefs of Hogwarts to freeze dry some food for him, or if they had some sort of magical food preservation.

Their first class, bright and early in the morning, was to be Herbology with a Professor Sprout with Transfiguration with McGonagall later that day. Harry, Neville, Hermione and Ron somehow managed to find their way outside of the castle after a prolonged struggle with moving stairwells- and they weren't even moving in a practical way like an escalator, they just switched destinations while you were climbing!

The greenhouses were hot and humid but crawling ivy and thick leaves provided shade while they worked with the plants. Professor Sprout was kind enough, but warned them in no uncertain terms that as time passed they would be working with more and more dangerous plants.

Their first class was spent with relatively harmless cases like aconite or belladonna that weren't dangerous unless you ate them, but the Professor had… regaled them with tales of mandrakes and devil's snare which were serious threats to life and limb.

Admittedly, growing plants wasn't going to lead directly to spaceflight, but there were many applications. He could probably find a magical workaround for turning carbon dioxide back into oxygen, although he did have to admit that having big gardens on board a spaceship or station sounded really cool. On a more long term level, making bases on other planets self sustaining would probably require farming of some kind, and if he took to potions… having some of that stuff on hand would be good as well.

Even with his limited knowledge of the field, Harry could tell that Neville was a dab hand at Herbology both on academic levels and application. Harry scooted over next to him as they practiced transplanting. "Where'd you learn all this, Neville?"

He flushed a little. "My family has big greenhouses on our property and since I never had much luck with magic… I just focused on the plants."

Harry was almost tempted to ask if a muggle could manage magical crops, but stopped himself in case that would offend his friend. "I'm sure that you'll prove out great at magic too. You've certainly got the passion."

Neville smiled and after a moment Harry decided to press him a little more, just out of curiosity. "So what sort of stuff do you back home? Do you experiment with soil conditions or the like?"

Neville nodded. "Oh yes. There are some plants which require very specific conditions to grow best or require frequent transplanting into optimal soils. We've got the house elves managing a few batches now."

"House elves?"

"Yeah, of course-" Neville stopped for a moment after he realized that half of the people at his four person table were raised by muggles. "Sorry. House elves are… well, these creatures that serve wizards and do household tasks and errands for them. Richer families usually have a few."

Hermione sent Neville a questioning look. "And these house elves… do they get paid?"

Neville gave Hermione a look, like she had suggested putting a lion on a vegetarian diet. "Of course not. The house elves work because they need to, after all."

Outrage was leaking into Hermione's voice. "They need to? Like they're slaves or something? Are they magically bound to your whims?"

Neville gulped. "Well, a house elf literally can't live without being attached to magical households… and they enjoy work too."

"They enjoy it, do they-"

Harry decided to jump in before they really started to argue. "Well we could argue about the morality of creating a species for the purpose of serving your whims, but now that they're here… well, if letting them do work they enjoy happens to keep them alive, it sounds like a win for everyone."

Ron chuckled. "If you're so worried about house elves, what are you going to do, stop eating food in the Great Hall? Who do you think makes it all?" Hermione's face scrunched up as she considered the fact that her breakfast was made by what she considered to be slave labor, but Harry turned to Ron.

"Say, how did you hear about these house elves?"

"Oh, the Twins went to the kitchens all the time. The house elves gave them all the food they needed and then some. Of course, they didn't tell me how to get in…" Ron mumbled that last part, disappointment evident on his face.

After a few moments of contemplation, Hermione huffed. "It just feels wrong, to keep an entire species around for the purpose of serving us."

"Well, don't we eat steak and drink milk? Just about every cow in the world today is alive because humans value them. Sheep, too. Pigs live to be slaughtered for food and all that. Compared to a life where your only purpose is to die, being a house elf sounds pretty good."

Hermione gulped, before she looked down at the plant she was working on. "Let's make sure we finish in time." They got back to work- no reason to fail their very first class.

* * *

Neville and Hermione were having a surprisingly spirited debate about the ethics of keeping house elves as they made their way to Transfiguration. Neville was having a bit of trouble defending his points and Harry assumed that was due to Hermione questioning his base assumptions- it was just a given for Neville, while Hermione had entered the wizarding world with modern viewpoints. Harry did have to admit that house elf slavery sounded bad, but if they needed it to survive, well then it was symbiotic, he supposed.

An extra pair of hands definitely sounded good, although Harry didn't like the idea of forcing a sapient being to do housework for him. He looked to Ron. "Say, does your family have a house elf?"

"Blimey, no! They're really expensive, and Mum and Dad just had us do the housework." Harry chuckled at that, but on the inside he felt a little sick. Even if house elves needed a household, trading them like chattel just felt wrong. If they were smart enough to do housework then they deserved some dignity, didn't they?

Their conversations came to a screeching halt the moment they entered McGonagall's classroom, and once the last student had settled in she launched into a speech. "Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts, and anyone messing around in my class will leave and not come back. You have been warned."

She pulled out her wand and touched it to her desk- which changed into a bulky looking (and rather bewildered) pig, and with another wand tap to the pig's flank it popped back into the form of a desk before she started explaining the theory behind transfiguration.

As she explained it, transfigurations were almost always temporary unless they were too small scale to notice- you could probably turn a grain of sand into sugar and have it stay that way for years, but that wasn't very useful. Harry couldn't help but wonder if the desk pig had all the knowledge of a normal pig of that age. Would it basically be braindead (would its brain even know how to make the heart pump and lungs breathe?) or would it be installed with every tiny facet of a pig's mind? Harry assumed that McGonagall didn't know about the specific breeding habits of pigs, so would the pig not know how to interact with other pigs or had the transfiguration somehow generated the proper information? If you transfigured an animal that didn't exist, would it know how to utilize a body that hadn't evolved naturally?

They were tasked with turning matches into needles, and after a lesson full of straining Harry hadn't gotten any results while Hermione had a fairly shiny and pointy match, although there was still a noticeable red tint around the eye of the needle.

The rest of Harry's friends wondered off after Harry assured them he just wanted to ask McGonagall a view transfiguration specific questions. She was intimidating enough that most everyone had left when Harry started asking questions.

"Professor, I had a few questions I wanted to ask about transfiguration…"

She gave him a curt nod. "Ask away, Mr. Potter."

Harry inhaled. "First, can I ask about the pig to desk transformation you did? If you let the pig be, would it know how to live and survive and all that?"

McGonagall chuckled. "Yes. Transfiguring something into an animal gives it the instincts of that form in the same way transforming an object into iron would make it magnetic."

"And what if you transform between animals, or transform something into an animal that doesn't exist?"

"For an animal that doesn't exist, magic proves adaptable. It will know how to go about its life, and there's some speculation that a few magical species are the result of transfiguration. However, animal-to-animal transformations are more difficult, as the creature will retain its previous mind and instincts."

"But wait… if transfigurations are temporary why didn't these magical species go extinct?"

"A transfiguration can be maintained if you continue to feed magic into it, and since they are magical beings, they manage."

"About temporary transfiguration. Could one say, transfigure one object into another for a very specific amount of time- down to hours or even minutes?" That could be very useful, shaping the craft's hull however you saw fit. The lunar lander in the Apollo missions looked downright comical with all sorts of strange geometry, because it wasn't designed to fly in atmosphere. Being able to change your hull at will had a lot of potential.

"It's possible to be accurate down to fractions of a second with great skill, but there aren't many situations when such a thing is required, other than perhaps some eccentric schools of dueling. It is a skill that is tested in NEWTs, however."

"NEWTs?"

"Exams taken during your seventh year of schooling for classes. They're optional, but you need them for some jobs."

Harry's curiosity was sated for now, and he left the classroom to have dinner, not noticing McGonagall giving one of her rare smiles.

* * *

Tuesday consisted of Defense Against the Dark Arts and Charms in that order, and they were all excited to learn how to fight off terrible monsters and the like. Unfortunately, the most terrible thing about the class turned out to be Harry's frequent headaches and the strong odor of garlic from Quirrel's turban. He was a stuttering mess and Harry quickly consigned himself to self study for this semester.

The Charms teacher's name was Flitwick, and he was the tiny man that Harry had seen at their first dinner- he needed a stack of books to see over his desk (couldn't you just create a magical platform or something? McGonagall really sold everyone on Transfiguration with the pig bit, why not wow everyone with cool charms?) and fell off when he got to Harry's name in attendance.

Charms altered an object without changing its composition as Transfiguration did, and that had all sorts of practical uses all on its own. There were hundreds of charms and thousands of potential uses for them all, including several in dueling, which Flitwick waxed poetic about. Professional dueling didn't sound quite up Harry's alley, but he definitely appreciated the idea of defending himself.

After some more discussion of theory, Flitwick told them all to grab a handkerchief and practice the severing charm, and told them to bring it up to his desk for repair if they managed to cut it. Of course, for a majority of the class no one could manage, and Harry did admit he felt a little silly waving his wand around and willing his brilliant red handkerchief to split in half.

Harry was particularly interested in those charms that were related to movement, although a few others like the light producing charm Lumos and the repair charm, Reparo also caught his eye. Being able to magically repair a spacecraft… well, missions had failed thanks to tiny flaws that a spell could probably fix. He wondered what would happen if the parts of the object you were trying to repair were separated- the crew of the shuttle Atlantis lost a piece of their heat shield at launch- would the spell summon the shards from where ever they were on earth, conjure new ceramics, or just fail?

Figuring a magical workaround to reentry was going to be interesting, but he was sure he could come up with something. Base case scenario, there was some way to teleport cargoes between earth and a station, cutting out the messy (and expensive!) business of moving craft in and out of the atmosphere. You'd pay out of the nose for a rocket on the way up, and either have to limit the size of your payload on the way down so parachutes worked, or you would have to haul up heavy wings. Not to mention that everything you were bringing down had to be carefully shielded or it would burn up in atmosphere like a meteor.

He certainly didn't plan on dying on reentry or moving to space permanently (at least right now) so that meant he needed a way to return safely. It was possible some magical materials had special properties when it came to heat, for example, or maybe he could create some sort of self-regenerating ablative? Or perhaps there was a magic that sucked up heat- that would handily solve the problem of radiating heat as well. The space station used complex systems of panels to radiate their heat- it almost felt like cheating if he could just make a magical box to suck up all the excess heat… of course, what was all this magic if not cheating?

Ideally, he could get a station sent up and move cargoes there magically- assembling craft in orbit was the dream, at least until he got his hands on lunar resources. He was going to have a field day with all the raw materials on the Moon, to put it quite simply. He would have to keep an eye out for satellites, of course, but the dark side of the moon would make a good base of operations for his future projects, if he could get there.

* * *

Wednesday was special- late that night they would be hauling their telescopes up the Astronomy tower, and Harry was buzzing with excitement for this class. Ron chuckled as he carefully carried his second hand telescope upstairs. "You're certainly excited, mate."

Harry nodded. "Of course I am. I'm finally going to learn about what wizarding society thinks of space."

Ron shrugged and his telescope wobbled dangerously. "It's… up there, you know? You know, ether?"

Harry nearly dropped his telescope. "Ether?"

Hermione seemed nearly as confused as he did. "Like the anesthetic?"

Neville also joined in their confusion, although for different reasons. "Wait, do muggles use ether as a painkiller? Is that what those aero-planes are for?"

Harry could feel his eye twitching and nearly wanted to scream. "But… space's a vacuum. There's literally nothing there."

"Then what carries light from the sun to Earth?"

Despite a sudden urge to throw himself off the Astronomy tower, Harry sighed and continued. "Light just moves through the vacuum at a certain speed, regardless of reference frame." He could see he was starting to loose Ron and Neville. "Muggle experiments disproved the ether. Light can travel through the vacuum."

Ron and Neville thought about that for a few moments. "Well, maybe they can't detect it? Maybe it meddles with their instruments like other magic does?"

"If ether exists, why doesn't it slow the planets in their orbits? If it's a real substance, the planets should experience drag, slow, and fall into the sun."

Harry managed to convince Ron and Neville that ether may not be a thing by the time they had reached the top of the Astronomy tower to meet with Professor Sinistra. The view from the top of the tower was splendid, the sky seemed to be more starry than black. He had to admit that this whole trip to Scotland was worth it to get away from all the light pollution- other than lamp light peaking through the castle's windows, everything else was inky black.

Professor Sinistra cleared her throat before addressing them all, and it took a few seconds for Harry to orient himself in the dark. "Astronomy is the delicate art of observing the stars and planets, knowing their motions and how they impact your magic, potions, and rituals."

That made sense- other than timekeeping, there wasn't a ton of practical use for astronomy (at least that he could think for magicians), so he supposed that if they had a class for it would focus on how space impacted magic on Earth. That would also make some good research- if the positioning of the moon and planets had magical effects, what caused these effects? Did they emit some sort of previously undetected "magic waves"?

"In this class, we will study the stars and constellations as well as the planets. You will be expected to know their names and the names of the moons orbiting them. The impact of the stars and planets on the average magicians can not be overstated, so I will not tolerate anyone falling asleep in my class!" That was an understandable concern considering how she was trying to keep a bunch of eleven year olds up at midnight.

She began to explain the planets and their great elliptical orbits, and Harry was very grateful that she knew about that sort of thing at least. Apparently the planets did effect magic and more delicate rituals- if you planned well, a planet in the right position could boost a spell, but she warned them about how even then spells could be unpredictable and wizards weren't entirely sure why. Considering that she didn't mention Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, or any of the dwarf planets, so Harry had a suspicion, but he figured interrupting the class wasn't a good way to start.

A lot of the students, including Harry, were unfamiliar with the workings of a telescope, and Sinistra had to help them just to get it working properly and pointed at the moon. Apparently, they were going to be learning a number of diagnostic and maintenance charms for telescopes later that year, and Harry wondered if some of them would work in an observatory- the spell to clean lenses would be useful, while the spell that adjusted your telescope and physically moved it… not as useful if Harry wanted to keep his future observatory.

Hermione and a few of the other muggleborn students seemed to be thinking similar things about Muggle discoveries, and Harry wondered if anyone had talked astronomy with the Professor before and shared muggle discoveries, or if they were afraid of getting a bad grade. Considering the numbers of students who stayed behind after class was over, this was probably a trend among muggleborn students.

Professor Sinistra sighed. "Yes, yes, I know about the planets like Uranus and Neptune and I've been informed about the moon landings more times than I can count. The ministry stubbornly refuses to change the curriculum, so please don't try to wow me with basic muggle knowledge."

This seemed to satisfy most everyone except for Neville and Ron, who seemed a little shocked by the whole thing. Ron was slack jawed. "Blimey… does moon landing mean what I think it means?"

Harry smiled widely. "Exactly what you think it means. Muggles set foot on the moon more than half a century ago."

Neville and Ron both seemed awestruck. "But… how? They can't use magic to get there, can they?"

"Nope!" Harry popped the p. "To oversimplify greatly, they used a giant rocket, almost like a firework, and rode that to the moon."

"Muggles really are something else."

"They make do with what they have. Muggles have done things wizards haven't done yet, but there are things wizards can do better." Harry grinned. "Is it too much to ask for the best of both?"

* * *

Friday was double Potions with a Professor Snape, and after Harry had promised to meet Hagrid for tea, his friends descended into the depths of the dungeons, which admittedly made him rather antsy, and the strange jars full of pickled animals in jars certainly didn't help the atmosphere- or the sickening feeling he was trapped.

When Snape reached Harry's name on the roll call, he paused. "Ah yes, Harry Potter. Our new celebrity." Some of the Slytherins chuckled a little.

Snape gave a speech about his particular field like most of the teachers did, although Harry certainly had to admit that the man could certainly pitch the field of potion making well. There was definitely a lot of condescension in his tone, although Harry could tell on some instinctual level that potions were one of Snape's great passions in the same way space fascinated Harry.

"Potter! What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?" Snape certainly hit the ground running- Harry was glad he decided to read ahead in his potions text.

"The Draught of Living Death… sir?"

"Where you look if I told you to find me a bezoar?"

"A potions shop first- the stomach of a goat second."

Snape did not take kindly to his cheek, but he continued his interrogation. "Can you inform me of the difference between monkshood and wolfsbane, Potter?"

Harry had to pause and think about that for a moment, but he managed to remember just before Snape tore into him. "They're the same plant, aren't they sir? If memory serves, it goes by aconite as well."

Snape sent him a glare with those cold black eyes. "A point from Gryffindor for cheek, Mr. Potter."

Harry found himself standing next to Neville, while Ron and Hermione bickered over their own cauldron. Before Neville could so much as touch the scales, Harry started reading through the recipe- if normal muggle cooking had taught him anything, it was that you needed to read through a recipe before preparing it. The same concept applied to a lot of things, actually. You wouldn't launch a mission without tracing out every step and planning for every eventuality, would you?

Neville was a little anxious for obvious reasons- Snape still glided around the class like some sort of black clad apparition, sending chills down their spines in a way that seemed very unbecoming of a teacher. Harry managed to calm Neville's nerves and kept their brewing going smoothly, and Harry was rather proud of the end product until Snape sent him a glare that could melt straight through the dungeon floor.

Hermione wanted to get straight back to the common room and work on homework, but with a bit of convincing she joined Neville, Ron, and Harry in visiting Hagrid, even if Harry had to pitch it as getting familiar with the campus instead of just enjoying tea.

* * *

Harry had to admit that the castle was situated in the most picturesque location imaginable, and vacationers would probably swarm the place if whatever magical protections Hogwarts used weren't in place. That was another thing to investigate in the long term- how did they keep muggles away from wizarding locations?

They headed down to Hagrid's cabin, a wooden house that might have been small for someone of Hagrid's size but towered above Harry and his friends. The forbidden forest was a stone's throw away, dark and menacing, and while it certainly wasn't the surface of another planet, Harry was curious.

Harry knocked and Hagrid let them in with a broad smile after he pulled his dog away from the door. He invited them in and Harry introduced his friends as Hagrid served them rock cakes which were painfully hard, and for a single moment Harry wondered if they'd make a good heat supposed he could probably get a lot of them if he really wanted to- they were all too polite to turn down Hagrid's offers of more.

However, the thing that really caught his interest in Hagrid's hut was the newspaper about an attempted robbery in Gringotts, which had been averted because the target vault was emptied earlier that day. Pair that with the fact that the day of the robbery was the day of their shopping trip… whatever package Hagrid took from Gringotts was clearly a major deal, enough for people to attempt to rob Gringotts itself.

Some part of him wondered if he could pull off a heist- logically, he had too much of his own wealth there to dream of it, but it was an intriguing challenge.

* * *

The school also decided to teach them how to fly a broomstick for some reason, which seemed a little strange to Harry. Would this be like a middle school teaching kids to ride bikes? Wouldn't the wizarding kids be dab hands at this sort of thing already? Or was it more like Driver's Education?

It turned out that Neville didn't have experience with flying, since his grandmother had kept him far away from any broomsticks, while Ron was their resident expert on the subject. Hermione had found a book on the subject of Quidditch, a sport which used the broomstick, and Harry was admittedly interested in them, and their potential applications for space.

Was it possible to upscale a broom? If brooms worked in space, he might be able to make his first true manned craft basically a very overengineered broom. Take a massive wooden log, which would serve as the shaft of the "broom" and basically build the ship around it (did you have to be in contact with the wood at all times? Would his futuristic spaceship need wood flooring?). A circular room around a central column would be a fairly simple design, although he'd have to make it safe to drive through space.

He'd have to do some more research on the specifics, but Harry knew that all sorts of nasty radiation were up there in space, and if he didn't protect himself from it… his explorations would be cut drastically short, and that was unacceptable. A lot depended on big ifs at the moment: if the brooms worked in space, if he could find an anti radiation measure, etc. Of course, if worse came to worse… he could probably use magic to build a normal rocket. Harry really hoped he could find an effective anti-radiation measure that wouldn't leave him blind, though. He wanted big windows to look at the stars, and that was practically non-negotiable.

Harry desperately hoped that there was some magical way to ease space travel, because it was the fastest possible way he had to make the cosmos more accessible. He supposed he could transfer all of his money to muggle currencies and fund their space programs, but he wanted to be "on the ground" so to speak, even if that phrase was an oxymoron when it came to space. Doing this sort of thing alone, at 11, was impossible without magic thanks to just how expensive rockets are.

There was a sort of cruelty to the laws of the world, Newton's principles and all the forces that made things move as expected, in the way they kept people trapped. Imagine increasing a rocket's payload by so much as a kilogram- that's easy, you think. Just add enough fuel to fuel to get your kilogram of mass from 0 meters per second to a modest orbital speed just shy of 8 kilometers per second- but that wasn't all. That fuel needs fuel to be lifted, and that fuel needs more fuel, etc.

A magical cheat, to get around that simple law of physics, would be huge. He wondered what would happen if you used magic to teleport straight onto a moving train while standing still, would you slam into a wall? Well, Harry had a few hypotheses about this- logically, if wizards teleported from one latitude to another, then there should be difference in velocity- Earth is wider near the equator and as such spins faster near the equator as opposed to the poles. So if you teleported directly from say, Kathmandu to London and you kept your original velocity, you would turn into a smear against the wall.

That was one of many tests he would have to work on. Did magic allow for faster than light communication? If yes, that would be amazing, if not… well he would have to look into working on some sort of AI or magical intelligence (that seemed like a good umbrella term for everything from chocolate frog cards to paintings, plus whatever wacky stuff he hadn't seen yet) to pilot ships for him. Even if FTL communication worked out, that would still be an issue- missions require a lot of maintenance, which he couldn't provide while at school.

If magic allowed faster than light transport (because that was a big if) that would be great, but he would probably have to get to other planets the old fashioned way at least once to set up logistics, if not more. Harry doubted Dumbledore would let him take a sabbatical to fly to Mars, which would take up the greater part of a year one way (maybe he could teleport back and forth from the ship to Earth?). In theory, he could cut down on the time if he could somehow finagle a craft that didn't run out of fuel. It would still take a while, but instead of waiting for just the right moment to begin a several month long trip to Mars, he would point the rocket at Mars and _go._

Normally, this would be a tremendously stupid idea that would result in a one way trip to death in space, but if you had infinite fuel (or just a lot more than what a normal rocket could provide) you'd just slam on the accelerator for half the trip, turn around at the midway point, and spend the rest of your trip slowing down. It would probably require a bit more planning than that, but damn if it wouldn't be fast. If he made the acceleration exactly one G, it would basically be like staying on Earth, although if he had a magical way to modify gravity, he could make things feel normal in the cabin while actually accelerating at several Gs, cutting down on time spent even further.

If magic couldn't violate the speed of light, Harry would accept that. Would it throw a wrench in his plans? Of course, but space was still waiting even if they had to hoof it the old fashioned way (if rockets could ever be called old fashioned), and if that meant Harry had to move to Mars… he was going to move to Mars.

Of course, while Harry was thinking about all of this, he had missed just about every word that came out of Hermione's mouth on the subject of Quidditch. Fortunately, his friends indulged his habit of occasionally getting lost in thought, and they snapped him out of it as they headed out to their first practice, Neville's new… Remembrall, was it? Well, whatever it was, it glowed brilliantly in Neville's hands, much to his dismay.

* * *

Everyone took their places next to a broomstick lying on the ground, and Harry honest thought it would better to just leave them there. He was no expert, but he could tell that the broomsticks were grossly inadequate, with their twigs poking out at wild angles. If they served to stabilize the brooms, then that was a major hazard, but if the professor had laid them out for them, that meant they had to be adequate, right? (Something in the back of Harry's mind started to remind him of space disasters caused by a lack of budget and adequate care)

Madam Hooch top them all to shout up after putting their hands over their brooms, and true enough when Harry shouted "Up!" the broom snapped to his hand, which was interesting. He noticed that the brooms weren't responding in the same way for everyone else: Hermione and Neville hadn't gotten much movement out of their brooms at all. Did the brooms have a sort of personality of their own, in the same way a wand might pick a particular person? The idea of a stick of wood having consciousness or at least some capacity for judgment was… not the most surprising thing about the magical world, but it was up there.

Mounting a broom was a curious thing, because they were just long sticks of wood- it was pretty easy to just fall off. Surprisingly, Harry managed to get his grip right almost immediately, and he was surprisingly excited to lift off- this was the very beginning, his first ever flight. Unfortunately, it seemed that Neville was a bit more enthusiastic than he and shot off into the sky.

Harry could see his face growing chalky, his hands shaking as he gripped the broom like a vice, and some part of Harry screamed at him to intervene, to stop things before a freak accident happened- and then Neville slipped and fell, landing with a sound that made Harry's stomach churn.

Hooch rushed over and she seemed to think his injuries weren't too bad- she was still going to take him to the hospital wing, and she promised a swift expulsion if they started flying without her supervision. The moment Hooch had guided Neville out of sight, Malfoy and some of his cronies burst into laughter.

For some reason, Malfoy decided that sticking Neville's Remembrall up in a tree was a good prank (the risk of expulsion alone would have scared Harry off such a low-reward prank) and Harry just snorted. The object was important to Neville, sure, but he wasn't going up there on a rickety broom when he could just ask Madam Hooch when she came back. When Draco didn't get any results, he left in the Remembrall up in the tree like some sort of Christmas bauble and came back down.

Hooch seemed relieved that no one had managed to fall to their deaths while she was gone, and she guided them in taking gentle, easy laps. Harry took to it well, which let him focus on Neville's Remembrall, which was precariously perched between two thin branches.

As Hooch gently guided Hermione's broom with her hand, Draco sent Harry a smug grin and pulled out his wand, sending a severing charm towards the tree which didn't manage to cut through the twigs , but jostled them enough to send the Remembrall falling, and instinctively Harry pivoted and sped towards the ball, the grass brushing his billowing robes. This was honestly a pretty stupid thing to do, but Harry just found the idea of a caring gift going to waste horrible- other than maybe Hedwig, he had never been given anything as a gift before- how could he let something like that be destroyed due to Malfoy's petulance?

He lowered himself as much as he dared, desperately trying to get close enough to the ground to catch it, and Harry just managed to grab it before he pitched up high to make sure he wouldn't crash into anyone or anything. He looked down to see an inflamed Hooch, which he expected, but McGonagall was storming over as well- where did she come from?

Harry landed, wondering if he was going to get punished for breaking out of line, but after a few moments of quiet whispering between Hooch and McGonagall, the latter walked over to him. "Mr. Potter! That was wildly irresponsible of you!"

She sighed. "Come along, Mr. Potter." Harry dismounted his broom and nearly tripped, but made haste to follow his teacher as she swept through the hall. Wherever she was heading, it seemed a little set apart from the rest of the castle- it was an underground dungeon, although not nearly as creepy and stereotypical as Snape's. McGonagall knocked on a thick metal door that was covered in fine etchings, and after a few moments, the door swung open to reveal a young looking woman who Harry recognized as one of the professors.

"Professor Babbling? Could you spare Wood for a moment?" The woman nodded, and she disappeared into the room for a few seconds before the door opened again to reveal bulky young man- a Gryffindor.

"Wood, I think I've found you a seeker."

Harry gulped. "What exactly is a seeker?"

* * *

After Wood had calmed down, Harry was given a basic description of the fine sport of Quidditch, which both Wood and the Professor seemed extremely passionate about, and they urged him to try out some basic drills with Wood later in the day.

Admittedly, Harry wasn't the biggest sports fan, but a healthy body would probably help his pursuits, and just about nothing else would allow him as much intimacy with brooms- he supposed he could buy one, but this gave him an excuse to get really into them and own one while at school. However, there was another question that Harry wanted answers for. "Say, what class were you just in, Wood? It seemed awfully secure."

"Oh, that's standard practice for working with runes… some of them can get rather nasty, and it's best to fiddle with them somewhere safe, and definitely don't test them in the same room."

"How do you activate them, then?"

"One of the first things you learn in Runes, after the basic safety stuff, is how to move magic around. In large part, you use long trails of certain runes."

"So… what sort of stuff can you use Runes for? Can they make things fly?"

"That's the entire concept behind broomsticks, yeah. You could apply the same runes to just about anything."

Oh boy. Oooh boy. Harry needed to get into Runes, and he needed to yesterday. "Would it be possible to creature some sort of… controllable flying machine? Like something you could move around from a distance?"

"I suppose there are some runes that allow for communication over distance in sets, but why would you want to make a flying machine without a person when someone on a broomstick could do the same job?"

Harry was silent for a second, and then he had an idea. Wood clearly had more experience with runes than him, so he just needed to present his ideas in a way that would interest Wood. "I was thinking maybe for Quidditch… you could have special practice balls that you could control, maybe? Or if you transmit visuals, you could review plays or make Quidditch a lot easier to watch. Can't imagine that pitch is too comfortable in the middle of winter."

McGonagall and Wood gave Harry approving looks, and he groaned internally. Was it really that easy, no bribes necessary?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The transfiguration talk serves to establish specifics on transfiguration in this fic. I genuinely had a moment where I stopped and thought… what is the difference between transfiguration and alchemy if the former is also permanent? I think I took this idea from Dodging Prison and Stealing Witches, but it makes logical sense, to me at least. The species I referred to are the quintapeds, which are possibly the result of transfiguration gone wrong.
> 
> As for wizarding Astronomy… I can't imagine they'd care overmuch about what planets were composed of. They wouldn't think the moon was made of cheese or anything, but if your astronomy is more like astrology, do the specifics of what Mars is made of really matter compared to its impacts on magic?
> 
> Yes, there's a line in the books about Europa being made of ice, but where is the ministry getting that? Even assuming Sinistra keeps up with muggle astronomy, some research of mine suggests that the earliest guesses that Europa was composed of water came about in 1951, based on low density and reflected sunlight. Wizards could learn this, I suppose, but how do their telescopes compare to Galileo, who saw the moons as pricks of light?
> 
> I may not be giving the wizards enough credit, but I can't imagine the ministry accepting a curriculum based on muggle theories of planetary composition which would have like 0 impact on the average wizard, or theories based on satellite observation.
> 
> Does the average wizard even know about Pluto, Uranus, Neptune, Ceres, etc? Food for thought, my dudes. As for the aether- there's no way in hell wizards figure out relativity.
> 
> If any of you are curious about space and hard scifi, I'd recommend checking out a site called Atomic Rockets. I'll try to explain all the science as we go, but the site is good reading if you like that sort of thing.


	4. Drone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit more speculation on the nature of magic- and of course, the events surrounding Halloween.

Harry found himself being dragged into the Runes classroom, Wood and McGonagall shivering with excitement. The Runes classroom was a surprisingly roomy space, but it didn't feel that way considering all the divisions that split up the room. That probably made sense considering how finicky Runes seemed to be, and after they had weaved their way through, Harry was introduced to Professor Bathsheda Babbling.

Harry was struck by just how young she seemed- what did you need to do to become a teacher at Hogwarts? Was there apprenticeship involved? Babbling seemed completely absorbed in her work, a complex assembly of Runes so tiny they could fit on his smallest finger nail with room to spare. Before Harry could start wondering about what would happen if you stuck runes on your body, she looked up at them, revealing a pair of brown eyes with vivid dark circles under them.

"Professor McGonagall, Mister Wood." She turned to Harry, giving him an appraising look. "And who might you be, young man?"

"My name is Harry Potter." He was expecting some sort of stunned reaction, but other than a raised eyebrow, nothing. Harry liked her already.

"Okay then. So what do you need from me, you three?"

"We'd like to talk about a possible project." McGonagall answered. "Mister Potter suggested a sort of… enchanted ball that could fly around and serve as a sort of observer for Quidditch matches. Would it be possible to basically project images from the ball to somewhere else?"

Babbling thought about it for a few moments, gripping her quill tightly. "Maybe… if you took the rune ansuz as it referred to Odin… I think it's possible, but why would go to all that effort to watch Quidditch?"

Harry stepped up to defend his idea. "Well, first you could use to avoid having to go out in the cold- project it onto a wall in a common room, maybe? Plus, there would be lots of other uses- Hagrid could use them to watch the Forbidden Forest, or they could help patrol the corridors." Introducing the tools of the surveillance state probably wouldn't be great for wizarding society, but Hogwarts could probably use the help- it was a giant castle with a remarkably small staff.

Babbling thought about it for a few moments, and then chuckled. "Sounds like a challenge. I suppose that both you and Wood will want to work on it?" Harry nodded enthusiastically and Wood smiled.

Harry turned to McGonagall. "So… will you let us work on it?"

McGonagall smiled at him and nodded. "Of course." Harry supposed that Quidditch was a weakness of hers, and he might be able to appeal to that in the future.

* * *

Harry had some free time most days, and once he filled in his schedule with all the Quidditch practice he would be participating in, significant portions of that free time would be spent observing Wood and Babbling as they talked shop about Runes.

A lot of it was discussion of theory that went over Harry's head- apparently, the runes you would have to use would be different than a broom, both because it's not shaped like a broom and because it wasn't intended to be mounted by a rider. That was a complex assembly of runes already, and Babbling and Wood covered their papers in scribbles just handling that.

Harry tried to explain, roughly, the idea of muggle drones, which they would hopefully manage to emulate. Hopefully, magic would allow them to do a lot of cool stuff on their own (like tracking players or automatically avoiding them in a Quidditch context), but that was all up in the air. Admittedly, Harry was doing this entire thing just to hopefully get a drone out of it at the end, but even a copy of those notes would be worth its weight in gold for his future ambitions (not to mention seeing how rune systems were developed by an expert).

The end result of a few hour's work was about 3 pages of hastily scribbled notes on strange, milk-white paper that was unusually thick. Harry turned to Professor Babbling. "This paper seems a little weird- is there something special about it?"

"Well it's isn't exactly normal parchment. It's what you'd call vellum- specially prepared animal skin used for writing. Even runes written in ink can be temperamental, so the skin of creatures with innate magical resistance is used."

He supposed that made sense. For all intents and purposes, working with Runes was basically writing down magic- it was writing that could kill you in a literal sense. Imagine accidentally pushing down too hard on blueprint paper and having your entire house or office blow up- not a very good thing.

Harry had picked up a bit of knowledge about runes, and once he got back to his room and finished his homework he dove back into his runes books with renewed interest. They still didn't make much sense, but they inflamed his interest even more now.

* * *

Runes interested him, but McGonagall and Wood were also pushing him to work on Quidditch- he apparently had a seeker's build (he hoped he wouldn't loose that once he started actually eating enough food every day)- although Harry was a little worried about using one of those old school brooms.

Harry informed his friends, and they were suitably amazed- Ron and Neville seemed shocked while Hermione started muttering about the history of the school and young seekers. Malfoy decided to stop by, confident that Harry had somehow managed to get himself expelled, but Harry didn't rise to his provocations and he eventually skirted away, Crabbe and Goyle in tow.

The days afterwards passed by pretty quickly, and Harry watched in amazement as Wood and Babbling's drone project (because he certainly couldn't say it was his) turned from sketch work on paper to a full fledged magical object.

Once Babbling and Wood had spent several days debating the advantages of their respective rune assemblies (Harry could barely tell the difference between the two) and once they had debated their way to a conclusion they double checked their work several times over- not that Harry was complaining.

Then they started gathering materials- they needed sheets of fine crystal glass to work as their screen, and even with Babbling's experience in carving, they lost several sheets to engraving errors. Instead of using the anti-magic vellum they planned on, they began gathering specialty leather to make their ball. They dyed it vibrant purple so people wouldn't crash into it, and while Wood and Babbling did the actual engraving Harry got to practice the basics of engraving on their leather scraps.

The end result looked a little like one of the Quidditch balls Wood showed him, although the purple shade made it very different from the red and black of normal Quidditch balls (it didn't feel right to compare the comparative massive bulk of their magic drone to the tiny golden snitch). The main difference was a glass circle covered in delicate rune work- this was their lens, so to speak.

Using runes, whatever the lens saw was projected to their glass sheet- it was almost like a giant tablet, although their controller was separate. Once again, the exact mechanisms of the control system were beyond his understanding, although Wood and Babbling were kind enough to let him puzzle over the notes and even ask a few questions. Somehow, through runic magic, commands could be carried magically to the drone from a runic controller (which looked a little like a numpad on a keyboard), so it could hover or spin or do just about anything. Apparently, there was some sort of propulsion charm that underpinned the whole design- no antigravity, unfortunately.

Just as drones had problems with battery life, their little invention couldn't fly forever- it would probably outlast the average Quidditch game, but it required someone to feed magic in before it flew off. Fortunately, it didn't seem like the drone needed a lot of power to do what it did and it was more an issue of storage, so Harry's plans for a big spacecraft using the same mechanisms weren't ruined.

Storing magic seemed to be rather hard to do- it was something of a primeval force, and at some point you basically went from storing magic in a runic battery to storing magic in a runic explosive. That meant if he wanted an unmanned mission he would either have to find a way to restore the craft's magic (getting magic from radiation would be the best possible option) or he would have to come up with a novel method of storage.

It may have looked like a miscolored Quidditch ball, but Harry had come to value all the work that had been put into their little project- it was almost like the first satellite, Sputnik. All that work and hope stuffed into one tiny little ball…

There were a lot of delicate touches that needed to be made before Babbling felt comfortable letting them fly their magic drone around (which still didn't have a name) and Harry was practically shaking with excitement- they hoped to do their first test launch early in November, a bit after Halloween…

* * *

Before Halloween, the only event of any importance was the massive surprise of getting a Nimbus 2000 in the mail from McGonagall, which honestly just felt like a gross misuse of power- why not buy better brooms for everyone instead of one sports broom? He supposed he shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, and he was getting quite possibly the best broom he could to test things out, but still.

Practicing with the broom was exhilarating: sure, it didn't quite have the sci-fi appeal of standing at the bridge of a giant spaceship, but he was definitely going to be bringing a broom to the other planets. He needed to see what it was like flying a broom on Mars; Quidditch in low gravity would be fun (or maybe on Phobos or Deimos, where a bad pass could send the ball flying into orbit).

All the good food and frequent exercise was doing wonders for Harry's health- he was starting to fill out his robes in a way that was a little worrying, but it was also nice to just be able to exert himself without ending up exhausted. Astronauts needed to be strong- they were working in a several hundred pound suit after all- and even if Harry's missions wouldn't be quite like normal space travel, he wanted to be healthy enough to really enjoy- and survive- space. Plus, as charming as it seemed, there was some undeniable danger to the wizarding world, and he wanted to be fit enough to survive anything Earth would throw at him until he could make his getaway (not that Mars was safe in any sense of the word, but at least it was honest about wanting to kill you).

Bludgers were curious things. While the Quaffle was just a ball, but the Bludgers flew with purpose, intent on hunting down players and knocking them off their brooms. It seemed very dangerous to Harry, but it would certainly be interesting if the same general principle could be used for defensive or combat purposes. Harry had a fanciful image of himself surrounded by a great number of orbiting balls, which would block spells and serve as a way to keep people away- the magic involved would probably be fiendishly difficult though.

They woke up on Halloween morning to the smell of baking pumpkin (what was with the wizarding fascination with pumpkins? He had grown fond of the juice though, so he supposed he couldn't complain), and after another disappointing Defense Against the Dark Arts class they started working on making things levitate in Charms. Magic was more than just funny words though- very specific gestures needed to be made (did it somehow form or shape the magic?), and everyone was having a bit of trouble pairing the motion with the words.

Harry was caught up in trying to levitate his feather, and didn't realize Ron and Hermione were having a row until it was far too late for him to mediate. By the time class was over, Hermione had rushed out in tears- and Harry decided to follow her. As much as he appreciated Ron as a friend, he wasn't always the most tactful bloke.

"Harry, where are you going?" Ron hissed.

"We've got a few minutes until the next class- I want to check on Hermione. You were being awfully rude, Ron."

Ron looked uncomfortable, and Harry decided to drive it home. "Every time you say something like that, you're basically acting like Malfoy. I'm sure you don't want to be remembered for that."

After a moment or two, Ron huffed and followed Harry and Neville as they tried to trace Hermione's tracks.

* * *

Fortunately, they didn't have any classes afterwards, although Ron was a little worried about being late for dinner. Admittedly, Harry had grown rather fond of the cooking at Hogwarts- courtesy of these house elves he still hadn't seen- but he would give up a filling meal in a heartbeat for one of his friends.

Their resolve was tested when they finally found Hermione… crying in a girl's restroom. Or at least, that was what it sounded like- the three of them may have been Gryffindors, but none of them felt bold enough to break that particular rule. Still, they weren't going to abandon their friend, or at least Harry wasn't and he managed to keep Ron and Neville from leaving either.

They exchanged a bit of quiet small talk as the evening grew later and the occasional cloud of bats flew down the halls. "I've got to admit that the decorations here are incredible- the best we'd get for Halloween in muggle school was a few orange and black streamers, if the teacher was the festive sort."

Admittedly, Halloween had never been to fun for Harry- the Dursleys would never let him go trick or treating and never gave him anything approaching a costume, unless you counted Dudley's clothes, which would probably fit snugly on a giant. That was probably fortunate, as Harry couldn't imagine the rage Vernon would fly into if Harry tried to dress as a wizard.

Ron chuckled. "Hogwarts really is something, isn't it? I mean…" he gave a sort of broad gesture with his hands, as if to indicate the entire castle, which Harry understood perfectly. It felt like something out a dream.

Neville sighed. "It just feels like I'm not meant to be here. I'm good at Herbology, but not much else. My grandmum is expecting me to live up to my dad's legacy… I'm using his wand, actually."

Harry gulped. "Didn't Ollivander say the wand chooses the wizard or whatever? Your magic problems could be due to that."

"But my dad…" Harry had a sinking feeling in his stomach that Neville's dad wasn't around anymore- surely, an adult wizard who was fully functioning would need it for day to day life and not just lend it to his son, right?

"Neville, I'm sure your dad would want you to be the best possible wizard you could be- and that means that you need your own wand." After a moment of silence, Harry spoke up again. "Would it be okay for me to ask what happened?"

Neville's eyes watered a little bit. "After you beat You-Know-Who-" Harry almost wanted to argue that he probably didn't do much of anything, but he didn't dare interrupt Neville. "-some of his servants, the Death Eaters, came after my parents. They're alive… but…"

Harry gently put his hand on Neville's shoulder. "I'm sorry if I pushed you Neville, and I'm thankful that you told me. It sounds like your grandmother wants you to be your father- and I'm sure he was great man. But you're Neville Longbottom, and no one else."

"Thank you, Harry." Neville smiled, and Harry couldn't help but feel a little better. Maybe he could cheer Hermione back up?

Before he could start discussing the possibility of going in to check on Hermione, he heard a faint thumping down the hall. Harry had a very good sense of hearing- he hated being surprised by Vernon or Dudley, and those footsteps sounded even heavier than them.

Turning around, Harry caught a truly awful smell that filled the corridor, and saw a towering gray troll slowly lumbering towards them, a great club in its hands. "Something tells me that isn't a Halloween decoration…"

Harry pulled his wand out with shaking hands, even though he was certain that whatever magic he knew wouldn't dent the thick, magic-resistant skin of a troll. His mind started screaming about how dangerous the magic world was, but he needed to focus on the big, stinky threat directly in front of him.

"Into the bathroom! Go!" Harry shouted and ran towards the door of the women's restroom- there was no way they could outrun the troll in the corridor, and doing so would mean leaving Hermione alone with the thing.

Ron and Neville followed as the troll let out a bellow and slammed at the doorway with its club, sending fragments of stone flying through the air. Oh, there was no way that door was going to last.

When the barged in, Hermione yelped, but her panic transformed into terror as she saw the troll trying to gain entrance to the bathroom, crouching low to try to fit through. The best chance they had to stop it was blocking it before it got through the doorway- but what could they block it with? Harry's eyes focused on the torches that filled the bathroom with warm orange light.

He always thought the torches were weird- how did they keep them fueled? Harry supposed this was a bit of a test, and he cried out the spell they had learned just earlier that day. "Wingardium Leviosa!" Fortunately, his spell succeeded and he managed to detach the torch from its sconce before batting at the troll's face with it.

The troll shrieked as the flames licked its face, and it suddenly changed direction, struggling to pull its wide shoulders out of the door it had so thoroughly lodged itself in. Ron, Hermione, and even Neville caught on to what he was doing, and with a bit of effort they began lobbing everything that wasn't nailed down at the troll.

Eventually, the troll collapsed due to sheer exhaustion, and Harry realized they might have overdone it- the troll was covered in burns, and thanks to Ron levitating another one of the bathroom's torches, the troll's rough tunic was singed and burned in places. Some of what they threw wasn't very effective- bars of soap basically just bounced off or melted thanks to the flames- but the troll seemed terrified of fire.

By the time the professors arrived, wands out and ready to subdue a fierce magical creature, the troll was still lying there on the floor, dazed and completely out of it. McGonagall's stormy expression was nearly as scary as the troll. "What on earth are you all doing here? Didn't you hear Quirrel's warning?"

Harry scratched his cheek. "Well… we never actually went down to the dining hall? We went to check on Hermione after Charms, but none of us wanted to go into the girl's restroom so… We just waited and then the troll showed up."

McGonagall sighed. "As gallant as your reasons might be, You really should have informed a teacher, but I suppose I can't blame you all for missing Professor Quirrel's warning. Please, just get back to Gryffindor Tower."

And so the four of them left, gawking in amazement at the body of the troll which still blocked most of the door. Harry had to admit that magic was amazing- there was no way he could have done anything against a creature of that size even a few months ago.

Of course, this only rose a bunch of very concerning questions. It was very clear that as impressive as Hogwarts castle appeared, it wasn't completely safe. Somehow, an entire troll had gotten inside, and while Harry honestly wasn't surprised that Quirrel turned tail and ran when faced with danger, the troll itself was a major issue. Either there was a troll habitat on campus somewhere… or someone had smuggled it in.

Admittedly, this was all based on speculation, but it seemed much more likely that one had been smuggled in- presumably there were some securities in the nation's premier magical school. Well he said that, but this castle was surrounded by a forest that was explicitly forbidden and had a third-floor death corridor. How did the troll even get in? Unless the mysterious potential smuggler used space expansion charms of some kind, that meant there was a troll-sized secret passage into Hogwarts… which was kind of horrifying.

Speculating on motives probably wouldn't get him much, but he did have to admit that it seemed pretty suspect. He supposed a troll would cause a massive ruckus, but what you want to do during that point in time? At the end of the day, Hogwarts was a school, even if a very dangerous one, so it what sort of valuables would you want to find? Where would they be kept? If you wanted something badly enough to lead a troll in, wouldn't it terrifyingly well defended?

Oh. Oooooh. Come on. That would definitely be a reason to have a super deadly corridor, if the traps or terrible magic on the inside were intended to defend some mystery good. Why you wouldn't just store the object in Gringotts…

No. No way. Considering that the whole death corridor was a new addition this year, that probably meant it was guarding a recent acquisition. Like the sort of thing you might take from Gringotts because you were worried it could get stolen. He supposed Hogwarts could be safer than Gringotts- it was isolated, empty for portions of the year, and by the school's nature most of the people who could even get close would be undereducated children.

So logically, if you were a full grown adult who wanted to get at the mysterious object, you would need to find another way in. Either a secret passage (this was a very cliché fantasy castle after all) or applying as a teacher, and from what Harry gathered, the only new teacher this year was…

Quirrel, the same man who "discovered" the troll in the dungeons in the first place. Of course, this was all a bunch of wild speculation, and their Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher certainly didn't seem like a Machiavellian plotter, but it wouldn't be that hard to put on a stammering act- it would probably throw the teachers off the scent too.

Some part of Harry wanted to rush off and tell Dumbeldore… but Harry also wasn't sure he wanted to trust the man. He probably wouldn't take one student's nutty theory seriously, and surely if he was the greatest wizard of the century, he could root out one thief in his entire staff? Unless he was indulging Quirrel for some reason, which made Harry even less willing to trust him.

Something was rotten in Hogwarts… and Harry was sure it wasn't just the troll's stench.

* * *

Harry was suddenly struck by the fact that he had forgotten all about the device he had brought to Hogwarts- one of Dudley's old tablets that he had tossed the moment it stopped slowing. He couldn't work up the courage to connect to the Dursley's wireless- admittedly, Vernon wasn't the most tech savvy man, but Harry wouldn't put policing internet usage past the man if it meant an excuse to treat Harry poorly.

Still, a tablet had a lot of useful functions, mostly for taking notes that could be searched through and a calculator. Other than space travel, (or perhaps as a step to help him reach space) he hoped to create some sort of magical database- a Summa Magica, if you would. Of course, that would require research into advanced magical bookkeeping (did the librarian have special spells for keeping track of everything? Hopefully there was some magical copying spell) or figuring out how to get devices working in magical areas, but he had to try it out.

Wait, what would happen if you had like, a runic pattern and used a TV to display it? Could you basically have any number of rune patterns on one screen? Of course, that would require a TV that wouldn't be broken by magic, but imagine how adaptable it would be! Actually… Harry remembered a blind schoolmate of his, who had a sort of Braille display they used for when the school taught them the basics of computers. Could a modified version of that allow for near infinite adaptability when it came to Runes? Or maybe you could do something with 3D printing…

Before Harry could let his train of thought get too far off track, he pulled out the tablet and tried to power it on, and as he expected there was response. That made sense, considering how intense the magic around Hogwarts was- it almost felt like the castle was alive, and he supposed that having all that magic hammering it 24/7 wouldn't help a device. He had remembered to charge it before he left, of course.

The question was whether or not whatever magic did to the device was permanent, and what exactly "it" was- how was he going to prevent it if he didn't know what was causing the problem? If it was some sort of EMP thing that broke devices for good, they should have heard about it, right? Phones bricking themselves near Diagon Alley or dying near some wizarding hideout. Something told Harry that wizards wouldn't be able to cover that up, unless they had a very skilled department of people who were also very knowledgeable about recent changes in the muggle world. And considering what Harry knew about magical society…

So his hypothesis was that whatever caused these failures was something temporary- a sort of magical scrambling effect. He even had some proof that whatever this would be overcome- he had seen a shop in Diagon Alley selling wizarding radios. Cell phones and computers were a lot more complex than radios were, but he would have to take a wizarding radio apart to see what made them tick- he didn't know much about radio design, but if magic caused issues with electric devices than it presumably caused some problems with radio, right? If Harry had to rough it and take a several week or month trip to another planet, he would probably need radio or some other form of communication just to keep himself from going nutty, so that was a priority. As good as books were, no correspondence at all would be unbearable.

He supposed he would either need to get someone to look after Hedwig, or he would have to work around bringing a bird to space. Would Hedwig be alright with that? Presumably, deliver owls had some sort of magic thing going on that let them navigate properly- would they even know how to function in space? Would it be possible to make a space suit for a bird? Of course, even if a bird could fly in vacuum (which they certainly couldn't) they couldn't cover the spaces between planets in any reasonable amount of time. Hedwig would probably have trouble flying in the Martian atmosphere if they ever got there- she would be lighter, but the air would be thinner. At the same time, Harry did not want to imagine the pecking he would receive upon returning from being completely unreachable- at least from Hedwig's point of view.

Of course, Hedwig wouldn't be the only one suffering on another planet if he brought her there- he wasn't sure about the specifics, but long periods in low or zero gravity did… unflattering things to your bones and muscles. That was more reason to look into some sort of gravity magic, although he didn't have much luck finding texts on it in the Hogwarts library. When he asked Madam Pince, she had seemed unusually evasive, even more so than usual.

It would make a lot of sense if gravity magic was hidden away in the restricted section, considering how an improper application could crush your bones into a fine powder. This was all based on the assumption that gravity influencing magic did exist, but Harry suspected that it was a thing- if you could apply other forces to objects using magic, why couldn't you apply a constant acceleration towards the floor? That was basically what gravity was, after all.

Perfectly emulating gravity was impossible- he couldn't just conjure an earth sized mass or something- but there were a few ways of getting around that before magic was involved. Would it be possible to just… levitate yourself down? If you were hanging from the ceiling while casting Wingardium Leviosa, would it work with gravity, pushing an object down faster, or keep it up?

All of this called for some testing, and Harry managed to slip out of the school to do a bit of testing on the grounds, on some of the grassy flats surrounding the castle that hadn't been covered up by the dense trees of the forbidden forest.

* * *

After finding a nice grassy rise that was a little out of the way, Harry set his broom down and pulled out all the stuff he wanted to experiment with. The most notable of these was of course, the tablet he had smuggled into Hogwarts, and with a bit of anticipation, he pressed the power button.

Just as he had expected, there was no result. He figured that whatever wards were used to protect Hogwarts would serve to foil any devices- but he had one more trick up his sleeve. After a bit of pestering, he managed to buy some of that anti-magical vellum the Runes students used, and he had quite a bit of it now.

The only question was how to make it usable? He couldn't just wrap the entire tablet in vellum or he wouldn't be able to use it properly- but he might be able to tell if it worked in practice just by seeing if the screen lit up. Harry didn't like folding and creasing the fancy paper, but he wrapped the tablet until it looked like a normal package and tentatively held the power button through the paper.

Sure enough, he could see the screen lighting up every so faintly through the thick paper. Harry didn't want to unwrap it until he could magic proof a proper space for it- so the question was where? He'd practically need to put up a tent made out of paper. He certainly couldn't take over a classroom for that purpose either- maybe he could layer the walls of a broom closet somewhere? He almost felt a little bad for not getting one of the super big trunks now- that would be an easy way to make his own little mobile tech lab. Did the trunk place have a mail order system? The idea of an entire flock of owls struggling to lift a trunk was admittedly pretty funny.

Well, that was the sort of thing he couldn't resolve in the short term, so it was time for more broom testing. With a bit of work, he managed to get his broom in the air, hovering a few feet off the ground, so it wouldn't hurt too much if he fell off (also, it would be rather embarrassing to lose your broom because you fell off and it was too high up), and pulled out a napkin.

He had nicked one of them from the dining hall, and after he had secured himself on the bottom of the broom, hanging in a way pretty similar to a sloth, he let the napkin fall before quickly gesturing with his wand. "Wingardium Leviosa!"

Sure enough, the napkin's fall only sped up when the spell took effect, meaning that it was dependent on perspective in some ways- he had suspected as much from using it to smack the troll with, but this was confirmation. This actually led to a lot of interesting stuff- it seemed like this spell was dependent on a user's frame of reference. In space, would the spell just start moving things upward as the person thought of it? Would the spell even work in space, or would it just become a sort of… acceleration spell?

That would fit his observations of magic as something sort of… arbitrary? It was wild and unpredictable in way science wasn't. Perhaps there was some deeper logic to it all, but it seemed logical that magic was someone linked to how people viewed the world. Take alchemy, for example.

While he couldn't remember the exact specifics of it, he was pretty sure that lead was heavier than gold in a like an atomic sense- as in, there were more protons in an atom of lead than in gold. In theory, the end goal of alchemy, turning lead into gold, would be as simple as somehow getting rid of the excess protons, either making them disappear or separating them from the lead to form some other object.

However, turning lead and other base metals into gold was apparently the apex of alchemy, along with the elixir of life, and it had apparently been accomplished before, which amazed Harry. The question was why gold was so hard to get. It would be fiendishly expensive, but it would probably be possible to turn lead into gold using muggle technologies, and magic should only make that process easier.

Of course, he hadn't tried that, so there could be any number of reasons why it wouldn't work, but he had a possible theory about alchemy. Magic may flagrantly ignore things like the laws of conservation of mass and energy (as far as he knew) but what if it had its own internal laws? He knew that magic couldn't generate good, nutritious food, out of thin air for one. Maybe there something inherent about the nature of alchemy that made getting gold difficult- unless there was some inherent magical value to gold, was it possible it was just… imposed?

Like, humans expect getting gold to be difficult, so magic is shaped in such a way to require mastery of an esoteric art form in order to make gold. Would someone who just didn't value gold at all have some different end goal for alchemy? Of course, this was all a bunch of wild hypothesizing, but it seemed like a possible way of explaining magic- it was so mercurial, perhaps because it was shaped by fundamentally flighty people?

At least this was his theory- magic, or at least the magic they handled, was fundamentally based on human emotions. Even Ancient Runes, that precise and delicate craft, hinges on human language, did it not? Maybe runes did have some inherent magical energy thanks to their shape, or was it simply the fact that most people recognized a certain rune to do a certain thing when fed magic? Could sheer intent make a made-up rune work? Could you basically build your own runic language?

This was a lot of good theory fodder- Harry figured he should probably get a notebook or something to keep track of all the questions he had about magic. But he could do that later, and for now he wanted to put his broom through its paces, and after making sure he had packed up everything, he kicked off the ground and starting flying high.

Of course, he wasn't going to do something as silly as shooting for space- the air would get to thin- and he wasn't feeling bold enough to even see how brooms handled when the atmosphere got thin. That risked him potentially growing faint or even falling unconscious, which would be a death sentence while riding a literal broom.

Still, he flew up higher and higher, until Hogwarts looked like a tiny model below him and he just sat back and reveled for a few moments. Harry had never ever flown before- the Dursleys would never been seen dead in the same airport as him after all- giving him even more reason to love brooms. Not necessarily the fiercely competitive Hogwarts Quidditch (Harry would have preferred a simple pick-up game), but for the opportunities it allowed him. The brisk Scottish air blowing through his hair, his robes billowing behind him; it was all so liberating.

* * *

After Harry did his own private testing, it was time for him to watch their first runic drone test. After feeding magic into the storage runes on the ball's side and a few final double checks, Wood crouched before throwing it into the air- and Harry felt a thrill of terror as it floated in the air seeming to be moments away from destruction, before he realized that it had been "falling" for far too long. It worked!

Babbling and Wood then proceeded to spend a few minutes carefully looking the ball over, taking notes and waving their wands to take diagnostics. The Runes glowed white on the purple surface of the ball as it hovered in the air, and after a few moments of waiting they started putting it through its paces, first slowly drawing circles or squares in the air before making complex patterns.

Sure enough, the glass sheet was showing the Quidditch field from the drone's point of view, and Harry could see three human figures on the field- Babbling, Wood, and Harry from a bird eye's view. Wood and Babbling knew that it was coming, but they were pretty amazed- it must have been very novel to see a "drone" for the first time.

Wood starting laughing. "It worked! It really worked!" He gave Professor Babbling a sly look. "Say, could I get some extra credit for this?"

Babbling rolled her eyes but smiled. "I have to admit this was a good project- it's nice to sit down and work on something new."

"So… would it be possible for us to make more of these?" Harry said, "We've got all the concepts set up- imagine how big something like this could become. You could make an awful lot of money by selling this to Quidditch officials, couldn't you?"

Wood smiled, probably imagining all the friends he could make on the professional Quidditch scene by selling the drone. "I suppose we could, but we don't really the facilities to start making them on the large scale. I suppose we could sell the schematics?"

While Harry certainly had the money to buy a drone if they went to market, he kind of wanted one immediately. "So… can we make another one?"

Babbling and Wood seemed a little shocked- it was quite a bit of work admittedly- but Harry pushed a little harder. "What's the point of developing this entire design if we don't make more?" Harry flushed, "I'd certainly like one. It just seems so neat!"

They chuckled. "Well, I suppose we'd probably need a few more if we wanted to provide good coverage of the games…" Wood turned to Babbling. "Why don't we give Harry the prototype? There's a lot of room for improvement before we get something marketable."

Harry supposed he didn't understand the intricacies of the magical economy, but if their prototype wasn't marketable for whatever reason, Harry would gladly take it off their hands. He supposed there was a lot of stuff you'd need to change if you wanted to one of these drones to be useful for Quidditch watching- it would need to project to several screens, it would probably need to be enchanted to follow players around to get good shots while also not crashing into them, etc. But Harry had his drone, and that was worth it.

It was possible that Harry had accidentally laid the foundations for televised sports in the wizarding world- well, it would only be sports at first, but that was something. Heck, if he really wanted to he could probably get some money out of it, but Harry was rich enough- Wood and Babbling would value the money more than he did, and admittedly he really didn't want to become famous for this sort of thing. The average wizard probably wouldn't even connect drones and space travel, but Harry wanted to stay under the radar- even if he knew that was going to be kind of impossible considering that he was Harry Potter.

If all Harry got out of this was an under the table drone, it was worth it- he could reverse engineer it in the future, and he had learned a lot about the methodology of rune-crafting.

* * *

Harry eventually decided to start researching alchemy, just to see what it was all about. Of course, he didn't expect to be turning lead into gold anytime soon, but it would something worth pursuing if it meant that he could, say, transform lifeless lunar dust into fertile planting soil.

So of course he found himself in the library again, an introductory text for alchemy in his lap, and of course he started by reading the foreword.

_Alchemy is a delicate art, but its most basic principle is a simple one: alchemy does not just purify metals- it purifies the soul. As you burn away the imperfections of your materials, your own flaws burn away, pride and arrogance purified by the fires of discipline and order. By the time you have mastered alchemy to the point of being able to transform any metal into gold, you will no longer want to transform everything into gold. A master of the craft could do more with the dirt in his lawn than a disciple could do with the finest lab in all the world; the average man who pursues alchemy for the sake of gold and wealth will never reach the heights of the craft if that is his only goal- through alchemy, man gains perfection._

_-Nicholas Flamel_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The idea of magic resistant parchment comes in part from To Shape and Change, but I won't expand on that too much since it's kind of a ways into the story. I used it in a very different way than they did, to put it quite simply.
> 
> I hope my thoughts on magic make sense- while Runes and Arithmancy are more structured, a lot of magic is inherently finicky. Especially take the Killing Curse or Crucio- not just any chump can pull them off. It requires emotion behind it.
> 
> I hope today's chapter didn't disappoint- Harry questioning absolutely everything is what I would do in the situation.


	5. Match

A bit more reading led Harry to the conclusion that alchemy wasn't something he could master overnight- that was antithetical to the craft. It was all about change- of course, there was turning base metals into gold, but even the elixir of life was designed to cause changes- it made the sick whole once more and changed the body from an older state to a younger one, and the pursuit of the elixir itself was a transformation, from ignorance to enlightenment.

One night's reading would not be enough to even begin work in alchemy, and he was honestly left with a lot more questions than answers. Much of the book was concerned with the processes of alchemy- calcination, separation, congelation, exaltation, projection, and a bunch of other terms were defined, and the book reassured him that these were key steps on the road to creating the philosopher's stone. Perhaps they were right- Nicholas Flamel had played a part in writing the book, after all, and he had actually managed to go through the process of the Great Work to create the Philosopher's Stone.

Admittedly, the Philosopher's Stone sounded extremely appealing for a number of reasons, but the amount of work required seemed to border on the impossible. Well, Harry supposed that it was supposed to be the apex of a life devoted to the craft, but Harry thought it couldn't be all it was cracked up to be. It would probably make sense that Flamel could make a cozy living for himself off of a literal Philosopher's Stone, but if Harry had a Philosopher's Stone, he would be lending it to a hospital somewhere (is there a magical hospital?).

So that meant that the stone either had a hard cap on the amount of Elixir it could produce- meaning Flamel couldn't donate any without dying- or Flamel just refused to give it away. Well, Harry supposed that Flamel could be a very greedy person, but if he had to field a hypothesis, it required a certain amount of alchemical mastery and personal development to harness the stone. If you could just make a Philosopher's Stone by following a recipe like baking a cake, then they should be absolutely everywhere. Sure, maybe you wanted to avoid inflation, but how could any person with a speck of empathy not distribute a literally perfect medicine?

It was interesting to see how alchemy was related to chemistry- many of the terms were similar as far as he could tell, although they were buried under a heaping helping of superfluous mysticism. Harry definitely wanted to pursue alchemy, even if he wouldn't be getting a Stone any time soon, but that meant he would have to get a lab to starting working on alchemy.

Add to that the fact that he wanted an anti-magic room to work with, and it was looking like he should order once of those big space expansion trunks, so that meant some work for Hedwig- delivering letters or some sort of mail order form, not carrying around luggage of course. He hoped that an entire parliament of owls wouldn't be needed to bring in a trunk. They could probably shrink them… right?

He'd probably want two rooms in this hypothetical trunk, one for his alchemy lab which would require magic, and one for his no-magic allowed technology room. Hopefully, he could mail order something like that. It seemed like the magical world seemed to be pre-industrial in a lot of ways- a big fancy commission should be right up their alley.

* * *

Runes was a fascinating subject, and Harry still had a lot of questions about it, even if he would have to wait a couple of years to get started on learning in an official capacity. Babbling seemed to at the very least tolerate him, and would humor his incessant questioning when she wasn't busy keeping students from blowing themselves into chunks with runes.

"So I wanted to ask- why make the students learn all these runes and stuff? Is there something inherently magical about the shapes or something?"

"Not really, no. Runes have power because of their meaning. In theory, you could write out instructions in English instead of Elder Futhark, but it's frowned upon."

"Why? It seems so much easier to just write normally!"

"Okay, I'll use an example from my introductory classes to Runes. Have you ever heard of the song Scotland the Brave?"

Harry nodded before Babbling continued. "Well, there a lot of versions of the song, but there's one I'm particularly interested in, that has a particular line. 'Dire is the horseman's wheel, shivering the ranks of steel'- do you want to guess what that means?"

"Ummm… Well it seems like the soldiers- the ranks of steel- are shivering in terror, maybe?"

"That's a much closer guess than I usually get. The word shivering had a different meaning in the past- it meant something more like shattering. The horseman's wheel refers to sort of cavalry maneuver. So in modern terms it would be something like 'dire is the horseman's charge, shattering the ranks of steel' which doesn't really rhyme, unfortunately."

Harry's eyes widened. "So… the reason you don't want to use your normal language for runes is because the meanings could change?"

"Precisely. Admittedly, this is a very long term concern, but using a dead language means that the Runes will always have that meaning, and your house's defenses won't collapse in on themselves because of a new piece of slang."

"But what if everyone stopped learning Futhark? If the language died for real…"

"We'd probably have bigger problems than our wards failing, kiddo. Futhark is one of the most widespread languages in the world. Just about every country in the world that's had contact with the English has a few magicians who know Futhark."

"So the only reason Futhark works is because everyone knows it?"

"Not exactly how I would put it, but yes. As rational as Runes may seem, it's fundamentally based on language- and language is incredibly complex. There's a lot of intent and interpretation involved- you have a surprising amount of wiggle room with this sort of thing. It's all in what the designer is thinking."

"Really?"

"This is why thorough notes are so important. If you don't understand exactly why you're carving in those runes, it won't work out as well. Intent plays a tremendous role in it; before Elder Futhark was used in Runic magic, it was a language- if you're using Runes to keep count of cows, you won't have any magical consequences, but because the only reason anyone learns Futhark now is to use Runes…"

Hmm. That was interesting. It would probably take a bit of psyching yourself up to convince yourself writing in plain old English could cause magic, but writing in an ancient script for a dead language- that sounded magical. Could Harry just force a writing system into existence? Of course, it should be something easy to print.

"Well, couldn't you just make up a rune to do a specific job?"

"First off, it's still very frowned upon to try to expand on Futhark- everyone is very interested in keeping Futhark dead. Of course, this has led to a few problems- imagine trying to describe a radio using stone age vocabulary." She shrugged, "Plus, if for whatever reason knowledge of the Rune's meaning is lost- the device immediately stops working."

Harry's first thought was kind of cheaty- could he, for example, walk up to a Hogwarts painting or something, teach it his runic system, and be assured that it would stick around for as long as that particular painting and Hogwarts survived?

"Oh, and one last thing- I wanted to know what the range on the Quidditch camera device would be. How far away could you control it from?"

Babbling sighed. "Well, the main issue is magic power- the runes should stay linked over any distance, through just about any conditions. They're sympathetically linked, in a magical sense."

"Thank you, Professor!" He rushed out, determined to do some testing in general, and to see if the communication was faster than light; if sympathetic magic was truly instantaneous- that was huge. Like, violating the basic laws of the universe huge (not that magic didn't do that all the time).

Now all he needed was the magical equivalent of solar panels, or at least some sort of way to restore magic to the system. It could be anything: a long range magical connection perhaps, some sort of thing that turned space radiation into magical energy (which would have the happy side effect of keeping space radiation from killing him when he went to space), or just straight up magical solar panels- there was no way that people didn't invent all sorts of weird sun based magic.

Admittedly, the drone was very unwieldy: it was about the size of one of the larger Quidditch balls, which made it very obvious when he was carrying it around. Of course, Neville, Ron, and Hermione noticed that he was carrying it around.

"What's that, Harry?"

"You know that I was hanging out with Oliver Wood and Professor Babbling? This is the fruit of their labor. Basically, a magical drone."

Hermione's eyes widened in recognition, but Ron and Neville seemed confused. The latter spoke up, "A drone? Like, a bee?"

"Not exactly. It's a muggle term that can be used to describe flying vehicles that are piloted from a distance. This is a prototype- Wood and Babbling hope to use these to make watching Quidditch easier- like TV."

"So what are you going to do with it, Harry?"

"I'm going to put it through its paces, obviously. Want to come and watch?"

* * *

Ron and Neville found the screen particularly novel, comparing it to wizarding paintings, while Hermione seemed fascinated with the Runes that allowed it to function in the first place. They were all impressed by the magic that let the ball float through the air, zipping around at one moment and hovering perfectly still the next.

Eventually, Harry decided to test out its range, guiding it in slow, gentle circles and exploring- gliding after the dark black of the Hogwarts lake (although Harry was sure to stay far above the surface- he didn't want the squid smacking his drone out of the sky), orbiting the countless towers of Hogwarts, and eventually soaring over the Forbidden Forest. Could Dumbledore punish them for viewing the forest from a distance?

Unsurprisingly, the forest was made of trees, but Harry had to wonder what sort of mysterious creatures were inside. They couldn't really see much thanks to the dense tree cover, but eventually they managed to find a massive clearing- not that Ron was very happy about what they saw.

"Bloody hell!" It was fortunate Ron wasn't holding the glass screen- he probably would have dropped it upon seeing the massive spider's nest that the camera was viewing, with swarms of spiders crawling around, including a spider around the size of an elephant. Part of Harry wondered if those spiders produced some sort of super strong spider silk, but he knew that Ron certainly wouldn't accompany him on any silk gathering trips.

That was definitely a good reason to stay very far away from the forest unless absolutely necessary, but some part of him wondered about what sort of things crawled the forest; surely, if goblins existed then other intelligent magical creatures probably existed, like dragons (if they were intelligent, which Harry really hoped they weren't. The alternative was too sickening to contemplate). A pet dragon would be kind of cool, but he had to wonder if they farmed or something. Wands were apparently made with dragon heartstring, and if about one third of each year of Hogwarts students needed a heartstring- well, they had to be farming them, right?

Like, how the heck were you getting enough heartstrings, feathers, and tail hairs to stack wands to the ceiling of a shop? Sure, this was probably the result of years upon years of making wands, but guesstimating that there were about 40 Hogwarts students a year… That was like 13 of each core- every year. Not to mention all the stuff they were hawking in Diagon Alley- large scale farming had to be going on, or they would have driven magical species to extinction. Hell, what sort of magical creatures breathed no more thanks to overzealous hunting? What potions would never be brewed again, what materials could never be acquired?

For Ron's sake, Harry decided to let the drone explore a little further; eventually, he saw a strange sort of shimmering in the air, and decided that he probably shouldn't just pop out of the wards- a muggle could be watching. If he wanted to to test out the drone's capability of long range flight, he should probably do so during the night, and just fly straight up, to minimize risk of getting busted.

* * *

November also meant the start of the Quidditch season- because apparently all the Hogwarts students liked freezing while watching a bunch of kids fly around on broomsticks. Fortunately, Hermione had managed to teach them the basics of the blue-bell flames spell, which meant that he didn't freeze to death while marching back to the castle. (They were magicians! Couldn't they just dig a tunnel or enchant the ground to be warm? Well, a fire spell probably was easier now that he thought about it, but why not have clothes that warmed themselves?)

Hermione had been a great help to the group's studies; Harry liked to think that he helped, but he could concede that she had an unbelievable ability to turn confusing lectures into concise notes. Ron would occasionally get a little tired of them geeking out; however, even with his lacking social skills Harry could tell Ron was joking when he complained.

They made a pretty good group in Harry's opinion; Neville had herbology expertise far beyond anything they could read in their books, both he and Ron had a lot of practical information about the basics of wizarding life, and well… Hermione was Hermione. Admittedly, Harry hadn't told them about the true heights of his ambitions, but once he had really gotten it going and he was sure space travel was actually possible, he would definitely bring them on board- he needed a mission control, didn't he?

Sure, the more people he got onboard sooner, the better, but at the same time Harry was deathly afraid of getting caught- or even worse, disappointing his friends. What if he got them excited only to turn around and fail? Harry wasn't an expert on magic- it would probably be at least a year or even more before he really got out of the atmosphere using his own skills. He supposed he could find an older student to help him out, but who?

* * *

Harry could admit he probably jumped the gun a bit with Quirrel- even if he was suspicious as heck, it was possible he wasn't involved in whatever was up. Everyone knew that something was in the third floor corridor, the question was what. No one wanted to find out on case it was actually fatal, but Harry thought that was a very stupid way to hide something like that if that was your plan.

If he had to hide something on Hogwarts grounds, he'd take a walk to the periphery of the Forbidden Forest and find a tree. Any tree at all, although maybe finding a distinctive or knobbly one could help, and from there just use magic to transfigure a temporary hole in the tree's side. Use charms to carve a hollow, put in your mystery item, and let the transfiguration fail. Voila, you have one item hidden in a tree in a way that no one would suspect unless they saw you working on it. Even better, do the same in a muggle building- tuck it between floors or behind a brick wall, maybe with that Diagon Alley brick pressing sort of defense. If you didn't know something was there, wouldn't you just assume any brick wall was a brick wall?

Sure, you could put something in Gringotts or Hogwarts to get the strength of their defenses, but from there just keep it hidden! Brick up the third floor corridor if you're so worried. Plus, there was the attempted Gringotts robbery for the mystery item. Someone was willing to risk whatever punishment the goblins would mete out, meaning there was something special about this object, wherever it was, because if you just wanted money there were probably easier vaults to rob. It seemed like a sort of risk-reward thing; why go so deep into Gringotts if there were richer vaults that weren't as dangerous to rob? Harry was glad his vaults weren't robbed of course, but if they were at least it would make sense. He had mountains of gold and family heirlooms in those vaults while the mystery object could fit in his pocket. What sort of terrible magical artifact was it- and why was Dumbledore basically dangling it like bait in a school? He was a powerful man with a bunch of titles- he was part of some international wizarding body, wasn't he? So just call up a buddy in Iceland and have them bury it in their backyard if you really wanted to keep it safe.

Heck, if you wanted to just make it completely impossible to find, put in a box and drop it in the lake to summon at your convenience- why do the whole song and dance of a horribly trapped defense system in that case? Sure, use Gringotts to store your money, but if Harry had to hide some secret magical item, no security was needed if it was literally impossible to find without knowing it was there. How could you summon something that you didn't know you could even summon?

If he really had to carry on the "hiding it in a school" song and dance, wouldn't it be better to use any of those methods to hide the real thing and just have a fake in the castle? Perhaps that is what Dumbledore did, and the entire third floor corridor thing was a giant farce. If so, who was he deceiving and for what end? It was driving Harry daft!

* * *

Their first Quidditch game was on a brutally cold day, and it proved to be a wonderful opportunity to test out the Quidditch drone. That left the students with two options: you could bundle yourself up and march into the bitter cold for a seat, or you could put your faith in the mysterious, unproven camera instead. While the wizarding world was a little slow to change in some ways, many people were willing to test out this new runic camera if it meant not freezing to their seats.

Harry had to suffer the cold though, and he also saw a few other people roughing it, like McGonagall, Snape, and Quirrel. He understood why the first two were coming out- they were going to be cheering on their teams after all- but why Quirrel? In this cold Quirrel's shivering would probably start to become an audible hum.

McGonagall was cheerful despite the weather, while Snape's poor mood seemed relatively unchanged by the weather. The man had done a lot to sour Potions (the subject, not any actual brews, although his glares were certainly acidic) for Harry, and while a lot of that resentment seemed personal, Harry could almost understand why he would be upset in general.

Snape was clearly very passionate about his craft, which while not a bad thing, might have led to his frustration. Every year for dozens of years he would be faced with a new batch of first years who would have to be painstakingly taught the basics. Snape seemed to enjoy classes with his upper years, where (presumably) the students were competent and knew their theory- or that could be because Slytherins were the only ones who would tolerate him for that long.

If Snape was a master of his field, Quirrel certainly felt like the opposite. Maybe it was some past trauma- which Harry wasn't judging him for- but how would you hire someone like him to teach? He stumbled his way through the most basic spells and creatures in the first year textbook; Harry could barely imagine how the man acted while teaching about truly dangerous magical creatures- maybe even whatever got him into such a state. Harry remembered hearing about the magical police force, the Aurors- surely, you could call in a trainee auror or something? Presumably you would need high marks in Defense to become an auror.

Most of the other teachers, with the exception of Babbling- who was running the indoor showing- were also trouping down to the field. Harry could see Flitwick- or rather, where he presumed him to be, due to the gaggle of blue-scarved students trying to stick close to a blue bell flame of considerable size- none of the students Harry had seen managed one near that size.

Eventually, Harry peeled off from the crowd (and his friends, who insisted on cheering him on in person) to join the other Quidditch players in their locker room, and they hurriedly changed into their robes. Vaguely, Harry wondered if the uniforms followed strict regulations- would a Quidditch player in Trinidad wear the same robes as ones playing in Greenland?

Whatever. Oliver Wood gave them an arguably motivating speech and they marched onto the field to applause. Harry's knees were shaking and it wasn't just the cold- while Wood and the Slytherin captain, Flint, valiantly tried to crush each other's hands, Harry found himself worrying. He had practiced, sure, but well laid plains so rarely unfolded how you wanted them to.

Still, he kicked off from the ground despite his nerves and flew into the cold air, rising up as quickly as he dared in order to get a good perspective over the field. The announcer- Lee Jordan, was it?- did help brighten his mood a little through his commentary, but Harry eventually tuned him out along all the activity of the game. He had one job out here, after all.

Harry had started to get into the swing of things when his broom bucked like a wild animal, and his already tight grip grew vice-like as his fingers whitened. Then it got worse, zigging and zagging through the air with agility that would have amazed Harry if he wasn't the one unfortunate enough to be riding the thing.

Eventually it rolled over, and Harry once again found himself in a rather sloth-like position- although sloths usually didn't have to deal with their branches trying to shake them off on purpose. He felt horrifyingly sick as his brain helpfully started reminding him what exactly such a long fall would do his body. Landing by bouncing off the surface was technically called lithobraking- although in Harry's case it would probably just be litho-breaking.

The twins tried to fly in close and rescue Harry from his malfunctioning broom, but the bucking was so wild that he was basically unsalvageable unless he managed to pull something off. His first thought was trying to cast Wingardium Leviosa on his clothes- a slow fall or awkwardly hanging in air might just work. The twins were orbiting just below him, ready to catch him in case he fell, which was honestly more reassuring than the idea of trying to levitate himself by his clothes.

He was too busy holding on for dear life to see what had caused his broom to stop malfunctioning, but Harry decided that now wouldn't be a good time to analyze that sort of thing- the sooner the game ended, the sooner he could start trying to figure out what went wrong- and the sooner he would be off the broom.

Once he was no longer in a life and death struggle with a broomstick, he got back to the game as quickly as he could, searching for the Snitch- and dammit, it was right under him? Going into a dive like this was a tremendous risk with a potentially malfunctioning broom, but he didn't want to give it a chance to start freaking out again.

His rapid dive almost sickened him- and nearly swallowing a winged golfball didn't help. He felt tremendous relief when he touched ground, and for a couple of seconds he wondered if this whole flying to space thing was insane before resolving himself to design something a bit safer to travel with than a literal wooden stick.

As Marcus Flint went into a fit, Harry gingerly picked up his broom and headed in the direction of his friends, who were standing near Hagrid.

* * *

Harry was glad to be inside, even if it was inside Hagrid's hut with Neville, Ron, and Hermione rather than inside the great halls of Hogwarts. He was gulping down some of Hagrid's tea with shaking hands, as his friends talked about the broom malfunction.

"It was Snape. Hermione spotted him- he was glaring at you and pointing, probably casting a spell."

"Rubbish. Why would Snape do somethin' like that?" Hagrid said.

Harry scratched his chin, deep in thought. Sure, Snape disliked him, but if he wanted to kill Harry, there were easier ways than staging a broomstick accident- surely he would know some potion that was explosive or had noxious fumes. "Say, what was Quirrel up to?"

"Quirrel?" Ron questioned. "I mean… would he even know dark magic?"

"And why would Snape? We dislike him, sure… but something's off about Quirrel. Why did he run up to loudly warn us about the troll? If he was qualified to teach us how to survive the wizarding world, surely he could trap or incapacitate a troll long enough to call for back up."

Hagrid jumped into the conversation, "I'm sure Professor Dumbeldore wouldn't ha' hired him if he wasn't qualified, Harry." Harry idly noted the way he turned the conversation around to deflect any possible blame from Dumbledore, even though they hadn't brought him up.

"I'm sure he was a great wizard at some point in the past, but now he's stuttering through sentences. He doesn't need a job teaching- he needs help with his issues."

Hermione spoke up. "If you're so sure that he's incapable of teaching, why think that he's behind some evil scheme?"

"One simple question: how did the troll get in?" That was really the linchpin of this whole thing. Quirrel was the first person to report it, or so Harry heard, and while Harry couldn't be sure who was in the hall at the time- he wasn't there after all- heck, if he was so scared of the troll, how did he make it all the way from the dungeons to the great hall before apparently collapsing? Wouldn't it be more likely for that to be a prat fall? If the whole scared thing was an act, it was a really good one.

Hermione fell silent at that, and for a moment Harry wondered if she had read some obscure footnote in Hogwarts a History that would explain this whole thing tidily, but after a moment she sighed. "I… don't know. Hagrid, do you know anything? You are the groundskeeper, after all."

"A troll shouldn' been able of gettin' in the castle at all, but Quirrel is more than capable of handlin' them- he brought one in to help guard the Phil-" Hagrid stopped his rant, but the deed was done, and Harry was given a lot more information to work with.

First, this was more proof that Quirrel was faking- if he could bring a troll in for this mysterious guarding project, he could probably smuggle one in for more nefarious purposes. That was ironclad proof, a lot more than his whole "he who smelt it dealt it" theory, but there was the question of what was being guarded.

Presumably, it was hidden away in the third floor corridor, behind at least one obstacle, a troll. It was small and apparently belonged to Dumbledore, and was incredibly valuable. So what words started with "phil"? The most obvious was the one that had been bouncing around his head for a while, the Philosopher's Stone, but the only one of those around (that anyone knew about) was owned by Nicholas Flamel…

Oh damn. Damn. Didn't Dumbledore's chocolate frog card say something about work in alchemy, with his partner Nicholas Flamel? That meant that Hogwarts was either holding the real deal, the only publicly known Philosopher's Stone in the world, on loan from Flamel, or Flamel had helped his old friend make a second one.

If that meant Quirrel was chasing the Stone, that still rose one question: why? Sure, Harry imagined that if you got the stone to work it would provide a lot more gold than could be earned on a teacher's salary, but… Well, Harry didn't even have proof that Quirrel was tied up in the attempted theft in Gringotts, so that was out. He could have just been playing the long con, Harry supposed, but if so, why was Dumbledore setting up this convoluted defense? Something wasn't quite right about this whole deal, but he definitely wasn't prepared to bring it to a teacher quite yet.

* * *

Hagrid had sent them off with handfuls of rock cakes and a lot more questions than answers. Once they had rushed back inside the castle and extinguished their bluebell flames, Harry's confidence had been dampened as well- what if he was wrong? What if he dragged his friends on some wild goose chase, or quite possibly got them involved in something super dangerous? He didn't want to confide in anyone until he was sure.

As concerning as the situation seemed, it was Dumbledore's problem, not Harry's, and if Quirrel was competent enough to handle trolls then that facade was probably hiding someone seriously dangerous, who may have just tried to kill him. A threat to his life was definitely something he didn't want to ignore, but at the same time Quirrel wasn't bold enough to try anything until Quidditch- presumably because it could be excused for an accident. (Despite the fact that it had apparently been centuries since the last Quidditch death)

But why did he want to cause a freak accident? Harry didn't think he had done anything to offend the man, especially not something worth a murder… So he was probably tied up in something greater. Hopefully, if Harry could survive a decade at the Dursleys, he could survive one magician trying to kill him- he had already done it before with that Voldemort fellow, right?

That meant his Quidditch games were going to be a major risk in the future, unless Quirrel had gotten spooked by this failure. Harry moved magical parachutes- or some other equivalent- way up his list of things to look into. Even then, it was probably something he should be looking into without a potential threat of murder- as fun as it was, brooms were still super dangerous- they were like the motorbikes of the sky. Who let schoolchildren do this sort of thing? Oh wait.

Maybe not confiding in Dumbledore was a really stupid idea- but at the same time, this was the man that invited Quirrel into the castle and who had apparently decided to install a death corridor. If Dumbledore knew full well that Quirrel was up to no good and had a plan for it, great, no need for Harry to talk to him. But if he was so ignorant that he missed all the weirdness surrounding Quirrel, then what would Harry get out of asking him for help? Would he even be able to convince him that something was amiss?

* * *

Despite Harry's worrying about the next potential Quidditch match, he was cheered up a little by the impending holidays- which he would be spending far away from the Dursleys. The Great Hall was a splendid affair, decorated with holly and towering Christmas trees, although Harry would have been happy with just about anything- they were living in an honest to goodness Scottish castle, after all.

Neville and Hermione were leaving for the holidays, meaning Harry and Ron were left as some of the only Gryffindors of their year. After some convincing from Ron, Harry decided to use the Winter Break to cool down a little, so to speak- he was still reading, but he took time to learn more about the wizarding world.

Wizarding chess was definitely a novel experience, and while Harry hadn't played much chess before Hogwarts, he was pretty sure that the pieces weren't supposed to back talk you. Harry could kind of understand why though- those little chess pieces were basically fighting for their lives. If being a painting sounded bad, what about being a chess piece whose entire purpose is to quite literally be someone's pawn.

Understandably, Harry had a bit of trouble going to sleep on Christmas Eve, awed by just how flagrantly the wizarding world would make just about anything, up to and including board game pieces, sentient. His mood was brightened considerably by actual, genuine Christmas presents at the foot of his bed, and he almost started crying.

If the pile of gifts made him dewy eyed, the hand made sweater from Molly Weasley opened up the waterworks.

"Uh Harry, you okay, mate?" Ron seemed concerned, "I mean, mum's sweaters aren't that bad, even if mine is always maroon."

"No… sorry. It's just one of the first handmade gifts anyone's ever given me." Harry cleared his throat a little. "I'll have to write her a thank you letter."

Hagrid had given him a hand carved wooden flute (raising the count of handmade gifts this year- and his entire life- to two) and the Dursleys had sent him fifty pence, but his actual gifts put him in such a good mood he didn't care at all. Hermione and Neville had both sent him candy, the former sending him a boxful of muggle confectioneries while Neville had sent him some choice wizarding picks- Harry was glad no chocolate frogs made it in. He was never going to get over how creepy they were.

The last gift was the real show stopper though, despite the package's light weight; on the inside he found a long stretch of fluid, silver-grey fabric, and Ron gasped in surprise. "I think I've heard of those- if it's what I think it is, it's super valuable."

"What is it?" Harry picked up the fabric, which flowed like water in his hands.

"It's an invisibility cloak- try putting it on!" Harry threw it over his shoulders, and Ron nearly fell over himself. Turning around, Harry looked into a mirror, and saw that he was invisible from the head down.

Harry pulled the cloak over his head, making his reflection disappear completely, and hiding a positively terrifying grin. An invisibility cloak? The sort of things he could with one of these- his first thought was wrapping his drone in the cloak, maybe tying the bottom with fishing line or something- it would almost completely undetectable. Of course, that would make loosing it a major risk, but even then there were tons of potential uses for an invisibility cloak…

Ron suddenly interrupted his thoughts. "There's a note! It fell out of the cloak!"

Harry pulled off the cloak and picked up the letter, which was written in fine, looping calligraphy that he didn't recognize.

_Your father left this in my possession before he died._

_It is time it was returned to you._

_Use it well._

_A Very Merry Christmas to You_

As Ron gawked at the strange silver fabric of the cloak, Harry's train of thought went back into overdrive. Sure, he was extremely glad that his mysterious benefactor had given the cloak to him- no, they didn't give it, they returned it. Sure, Harry could understand not mailing a two year old an invisibility cloak, but this was his birthright, wasn't it? It wasn't even regifting- this was returning something you were loaned and calling it a gift.

In addition, this person apparently knew his parents well enough to have been loaned a valuable magical item, but didn't say, sit Harry down to explain anything? Admittedly, Harry hadn't been very proactive in asking around for this sort of thing, but if there was a close family friend of his parents living on campus, Harry figured they'd stop by for a quick chat with their friend's orphan.

Harry also felt defensive of his new cloak- it was a physical possession of his father's after all, so he made to sure to hide it away once the Weasley twins burst in. Their sheer energy helped brighten his mood a little, and made the question of his mysterious gift giver a little less important. They were less of a worry than a potential murderer in Quirrel, at least.

* * *

The Christmas feast was a splendid affair, as was the snowball fight that followed afterwards, but while everyone else was a little too stuffed to do anything but laze around near the fire, Harry could think of only one way to make this Christmas any better: acquiring some delicious knowledge.

So he decided to put his brand new cloak through its paces and give the Restricted Section a quick browse. Harry could understand full well that some knowledge was too dangerous to spread and some of those books might be horrifyingly dangerous, but he had an invisibility cloak, so he was going to give the section a look- information wanted to be free, or something like that.

At the very least, if he was going to take a peak at forbidden knowledge, he was going to pick something that wouldn't get him killed (probably). Unreadable title or no label at all? Instant disqualification, along with mysterious stains or the like.

He passed by _Magick Moste Evil_ for obvious reasons- he wasn't here to harm people, but there might be something interesting hidden away in the restricted section. There were probably a number of reasons for books to get banned: political ones would be the most obvious, but maybe some spells were just too dangerous if not cast by an expert? Harry was aware of the irony in thinking that- he was a precocious first year at the end of the day, but he wasn't planning on casting any of the magic- probably…

Unfortunately, Harry would be limited in his reading- he couldn't just take a book out without provoking a bunch of very awkward questions or a search. Sure, his cloak was good, but bringing a forbidden book back to his room for study was just asking for problems.

He did a bit of browsing, but regretted it for the most part- lots of the spells described were downright nasty, especially after you thought about them for a while. The weirdest of them all was probably a collection of simple household spells to help with cooking- Harry was certain that the spell that brought pots to a simmer wasn't that dangerous, until he reached a page near the very back that was dog-eared.

After uncreasing the corner- because who would do that to a good book?- Harry found himself reading about a spell which was used to clean animals for cooking- getting rid of skin and feathers and the like, and setting them to the side for later use. It took a few moments of thinking to figure out why that particular spell might get banned, but once he figured it out he nearly threw up, but managed to calm his churning stomach; even if the image his mind just provided was horrible, he probably wouldn't be able to clean up the mess if he did vomit.

After carefully reshelving the book and resolving himself to to look into body covering magical armor, Harry crept off. It was getting late, and he didn't want to get caught. He was certain there would be something useful in the Forbidden Section, like that book _Moste Potente Potions_ , he just needed to sort through the nasty dark magic, or think of better ways to use those spells. If this trip had taught him anything, it was that there were a lot of ways to use a spell for more than just its intended purpose.

Probably not the best way to cap off Christmas, but it was the best holiday Harry had so far, if it even was Christmas anymore. He had admittedly lost track of time while reading, but he still felt awake and full of energy. A bit of carefree exploration of the castle by night couldn't hurt, could it? The castle always seemed to be changing- did it behave differently at night?

* * *

Harry eventually found a room- which was not a surprise in itself of course, as all buildings were composed of rooms- whose main feature was a mirror. Desks and chairs had been pushed to the side to accommodate it, and it nearly touched the roof. There was an inscription on its top written in gibberish, but before Harry could start pondering over its meaning, he looked into mirror and nearly jumped.

There was a crowd of people behind him, two of which stood directly behind his reflection. After swirling around and swiping the air to see if someone was actually there (to no effect) he turned back at the mirror, to look at the duo. A man with messy black hair and a red-haired woman with vibrant green eyes- just like Harry's.

Were these… his parents? Looking further, he could see others in the background- others who bore a great resemblance to his parents… grandparents, then? It was marvelous- was this what a real family looked like?- but then Harry froze. As good as this was, it wasn't real. It was basically a TV screen- it was just showing something that particularly appealed to him, something that may not have been true at all.

He looked back up at the letters on the mirror's top, which made no sense. What the heck was that first word, Erised, supposed to mean? This mirror held many more questions than answers, even if it had given him a possible idea of what his parents looked like. Whatever it was and no matter what it showed him, it couldn't make those things real.

Harry would probably come again, just to study what made the mirror tick. There was something strange about it- and he wanted to figure it out. Hopefully, this mystery would be a little less dangerous than whatever crazy game Dumbledore was playing with Quirrel. So Harry left the room, resolved to see the mirror again- for research only!- while ignoring the strange mix of joy and sadness in his gut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wish I could take credit for the litho-breaking joke, but it's fairly common among Kerbal Space Program players. I recommend that game 100% if you like space.
> 
> Be sure to review with any questions or concerns or whatever. I admittedly wrote the discovery of the whole Philosopher's Stone Kerfuffle differently, but this is a different Harry so I figured it fit.
> 
> My Harry also has a notable distrust of authority. I think that's a rational route for a Harry Potter to take when confronted with the whole wizarding she-bang and the fact that no one in power had bailed him out of the Dursley's. Plus, he's 11.


End file.
